I Slept With My Enemy, Now He Won't Let Me Go novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Boy From the Boathouse

The man who sat down in Winifred's study was broad, balding and twenty-eight.

His nose had a crooked bend halfway down.

He kept his cap in both hands and did not look at Jude.

Winifred poured him coffee herself.

"You gave my mother a job once," he said. "At the paint shed. I never thanked you."

"You can thank me by telling the truth."

"That's why I'm here."

Neil sat on the daybed with the quilt over his knees.

Jude stood by the window with his arms folded, and Britt leaned on the bookcase.

Nobody had told the man to sit near Jude, and he had not.

"Say it," Winifred said.

The man turned the cap over.

"Two months ago a guy called my shop. Nice voice. Said he was a friend of the Ashworths who'd heard I used to go to school with Neil."

"Ansel," Jude said.

"He never gave a name. Always a different number." The man swallowed. "He said there was money in it, for old times. He wanted me to go to the Gazette and tell them what I saw the day I walked in on you in the boathouse, three weeks after the infirmary, when we were fifteen."

Neil's hands went cold under the quilt.

He made himself keep looking at the man's face.

"What did you see?" he said.

The man looked up for the first time.

He had pale tired eyes, and they filled.

"I saw a kid getting dressed," he said. "I didn't understand it. I told two boys because I was fifteen and stupid and it sounded like a good story. I've been sorry for thirteen years."

"You were a child," Neil said.

"So were you."

Jude made a sound in his throat.

"I broke your nose for that," he said.

"You did." The man touched it, and almost smiled. "It healed crooked. Every winter it aches before the snow. My wife says it's like having a barometer."

"I'm sorry."

"You were right to do it." The man shook his head. "I figured that out years ago. I only didn't know why you did it until your sister's message. She said you'd been covering for him ever since."

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