My Husband Hung Up on Me the Night I Gave Birth novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Out Loud
Three hundred heads turned to the back wall.
I looked at my husband.
He was already walking.
He came down the center aisle in his black suit, past the staring tables.
He did not hurry.
Gwen watched him come, and her face started to shine.
She thought she had won.
"Tell them, Ryan," she said. "Tell them what you did."
He climbed the three steps to the stage and took the microphone from its stand.
His hand was steady. I could see the cost of it in his shoulders.
"My name is Ryan Tierney," he said. "I am a detective with Major Crimes, suspended since this morning."
Someone in the crowd gasped.
"Six years ago on the fourteenth of August, I shot a man behind a liquor store on Dutton Street. He was twenty years old. He was Gwen Dearing's brother."
The ballroom went completely still.
"I fired twice, and then I let his sister believe it was a clean shooting."
Gwen's smile stayed where it was, but her eyes flickered.
She had planned for him to stammer and deny it.
She had meant to tell the room herself while he stood there guilty.
He had said it before she could.
"My partner took a gun from his own trunk and put it in the boy's hand," Ryan said. "I signed his report."
He did not look away from Gwen.
"I let the department call a dead kid a threat. I stood beside his sister at the funeral and held her hand."
A woman at the front table began to cry.
"I never told my wife. I took one day off every August and went to his grave and came home and lied about where I'd been."
He turned his head and looked straight at me.
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