My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Seven Years

Hutch tells her how he bought the painting before she ever met Graydon and why he skipped the wedding, then refuses to sell; a text from Graydon shows he knows exactly where she is.

"You knew," I said. "For four years."

"Yes."

"And you never said a word."

"It wasn't mine to say."

He stayed in the doorway.

Downstairs a ball hit the pins and somebody whooped.

I looked back at the painting because it was easier than looking at him.

"How much did you pay for her?"

"Sixty thousand."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"He paid me nine."

Hutch didn't laugh.

"Then he cheated you," he said.

"He paid for my mother's nurse."

"He still cheated you."

I sat down on the edge of his bed in my green silk gown.

Then I remembered whose bed it was and stood back up.

He almost smiled.

"There's a couch," he said. "And nachos. The nachos are a crime, but they're hot."

The couch was by the front window, under the buzz of the neon moon.

He went down and came back with a paper boat of chips and orange cheese and two beers.

He also brought a gray Moonlite Lanes T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants with the drawstring pulled all the way out.

"Bathroom's behind the bookcase."

I changed with the door locked.

The pants came down past my feet.

When I came out, he'd turned the lamp toward the wall so the painting sat in shadow.

"You can leave her lit," I said.

"You sure?"

"She's been in the dark eight years. She can have the lamp."

He turned it back.

I ate a chip.

It was terrible.

I ate four more.

"Tell me how," I said.

He sat on the floor with his back against the brick, his knees up, his beer on one knee.

"I was twenty-six. I'd walked out of the bank the year before. Mother had stopped speaking to me."

"Graydon said you had a breakdown."

"Graydon says a lot of things at Christmas."

He picked at the label on his bottle.

"My grandfather left me sixty-three thousand dollars. I went to that painter's show because a girl I was seeing wanted to go. She left after an hour. I stayed three."

"Why?"

"Everybody else in that room was performing. You were the only one asleep."

I looked at the girl on the sheet.

My mother had been on morphine that fall.

I used to sleep two hours a night in a chair by her bed.

At the studio, the painter let me sleep for real.

That was the whole job.

"She looked like she'd finally been allowed to rest," Hutch said. "I'd just quit the only life I knew. I wanted that on my wall. I didn't know who you were. I didn't know you were real."

"And then I walked into your mother's dining room."

"On Graydon's arm. In a yellow dress."

"You left before dessert."

"I went out to the truck and sat there for an hour."

"And the wedding?"

He took a long drink.

"I drove to Montana so I'd have somewhere to be."

"You actually went to Montana?"

"Bozeman. It rained the whole week. I bought a hat."

I laughed again, and this time it came out right.

He looked at me.

"Somebody tried to buy her this summer," he said. "An agent. Twice. I said no twice."

"That was Graydon."

"I figured it out about an hour ago, when you walked up my stairs in a ball gown."

"He'll come here himself."

"Let him."

"Hutch, he'll offer you anything."

He set the bottle down on the floor.

"Neve. She isn't for sale. Not to him. Not to anybody but you."

"I can't afford her."

"I didn't say you'd have to pay."

The neon moon hummed against the glass.

I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I ate another chip.

"These really are a crime," I said.

"The machine is from 1981. I can't kill it. It's the only thing in here older than the lanes that still works."

"You could buy a new one."

"I could. I'm sentimental about things that keep going."

He brought me a pillow and a blanket that smelled like cedar.

He went into the bedroom and lay down on top of the covers, still in his jeans.

He left the door open.

From the couch I could see the corner of the blue sheet glowing over his head.

I lay there and listened to the last league pack up downstairs.

The bartender called goodnight up the stairs.

Hutch called it back.

At ten to two, my phone lit up on the floor.

I'd ignored nineteen texts from Graydon since I left the ballroom.

The twentieth was a photo.

My white car, parked under the neon moon, on Milwaukee Avenue.

Taken from across the street, maybe ten minutes ago.

Under it, one line.

"Say hi to my brother."

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