My Wife Sent Me to a Psych Ward, So I Gave Her a Big Surprise novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Guest in Her Own Marriage

Maura's POV

Rosalind's text came at four in the afternoon, from a number I did not know.

It said: I'm at the hospital in Columbus until seven, at my checkup. Please. Ten minutes. I won't ask for anything.

Damon was at the county prosecutor's office with a dozen banker's boxes and a lawyer who billed by the quarter hour.

I read the text and drove to Columbus anyway.

The hospital cafeteria was nearly empty.

Rosalind sat at a corner table with a paper cup of tea she was not drinking and a folder of ultrasound prints beside it.

She had washed her face.

Without makeup she looked her age, and tired, and younger than I had expected.

I sat across from her and kept my coat on.

"Thank you for coming," she said.

"You said ten minutes."

"I did." She turned the cup a quarter turn. "I'm not going to defend myself. I wanted to tell you something I wish somebody had told me."

"About Damon."

"Yes."

I waited.

"He's very good at love," she said. "At the start. He pays attention. He remembered that I hated cilantro, and he remembered my mother's birthday, and he drove forty minutes for the right kind of bread."

"I know what he's like."

"Do you?" It wasn't unkind. "Then you know the part that comes after."

"Tell me."

"It happens one apology at a time. A Saturday route is down a driver, and he's sorry, and you say it's fine before he asks." She looked at her hands. "I stopped asking him to come home, because every time I asked, I watched him choose, and he was sorry about it. That was the worst part. He was always so sorry."

"You didn't have him committed because he worked late."

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