My Substitute Wife Is Not on the Return Manifest novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: What You Never Asked
The power came back on a little after six.
By seven the kitchen smelled of coffee that neither of them had touched.
Signe sat at the table with her chart tube and a roll of packing tape.
Dane stood at the counter in yesterday's shirt.
He had not slept, and she had not asked him to.
"You can't object to your own divorce," she said. "Not without giving a reason."
"I have one."
"Then say it."
He tapped his watch twice and looked at the window.
"I can't put it in a sentence yet."
"Then it isn't a reason," Signe said. "It's a delay."
"It's three years of my life."
"Mine too."
He turned around.
For the first time that morning he looked straight at her, and she saw how tired his eyes were.
"You put the papers between two others and slid them across the table," he said. "You never asked me what I wanted. You never asked me to stay. You didn't give me one chance to say anything."
"You were on the phone with her."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the answer," Signe said, and her voice came out harder than she meant. "You signed in a heartbeat. You didn't ask a single question."
"You never ask me for anything."
"What should I have asked for?"
He did not reply.
She stood up and pushed the chair in. Her hands were shaking, so she held on to its back.
"Do you know what you did at the lighthouse?" she said.
"I stood up in front of the whole station and asked who would go through with it."
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