I Regret Loving You for Five Years novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Fallout

The reporters started shouting all at once.

Marshall held up one hand.

They actually stopped.

"One more thing," he said. "Dr. Thea Bevan is the physician at that station. She found the relabeled drugs in Christchurch and paid for replacements with her own savings. She was my wife for five years."

A woman in the front row called out over the others.

"Mr. Ludlow, the video in this lobby. The woman you said was stalking you..."

"I never said she was stalking me. My fiancee's office said that."

He looked down at the marble floor for a second.

"She was bringing me my inhaler. I was having an asthma attack upstairs. Security had her by the arm, and I came down, and I took the inhaler out of her hand. And I told them I didn't know her."

The lobby went quiet.

So did our galley.

"That was a lie," Marshall said. "It's the worst thing I've ever done. Until I found out about the kits."

He stepped back from the podium.

"That's all. No questions."

He walked out of the frame.

The feed cut to two anchors in a studio, both talking at once.

***

Nobody in the galley moved.

Then forty heads turned toward me.

I was standing by the coffee urn in Boone's sweater with a mug I'd forgotten to fill.

I didn't know what my face was doing.

Five years of waiting for him to say it out loud.

He'd finally said it.

He'd said it in the lobby, on the same floor, to the same cameras.

And all I could think was that Harriet's pressure had been ninety over sixty at two.

"Doc?" the carpenter said carefully. "You okay?"

"I have to go check on my patient," I said.

I put the empty mug down and walked out.

Behind me I heard the power plant guy say, very quietly, "Leave her be."

Then a chair scraped, and someone followed me down the hall.

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