She Steps Out Of Betrayal's Shadow To Rebuild Her Broken Home novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Courthouse Steps
Dorothy came up the lane at a run, which Melinda had not seen her do in twenty years.
"They've arrested him," she said at the gatehouse door. "The sheriff did it in front of a room. He says there's a second copy under the cushion of his father's chair."
Melinda was already across the floor.
She lifted the cushion, and the little black drive was there in a sandwich bag.
"Take it to your friend on Willow Lane," she said. "Put it somewhere nobody would look. Under the television."
"Melinda."
"Go the back way, through the orchard."
Dorothy went.
The deputies came forty minutes later with a paper and a camera.
Melinda opened the door before they knocked.
"The warrant lists a laptop and any storage media," she said. "I read it on my phone while you were parking. You're welcome to the laptop."
They took the laptop.
They went through the drawers and under the cot, and one of them lifted the cushion and looked at the bare chair frame.
They left without a word to her, and the laptop went with them.
On Sunday morning the story broke.
It ran under the name of a local news page with forty thousand followers, and the picture on it was of her.
She was at the stump on Friday, in the blue dress, with Zachary a hand's width away and her face turned up to his.
The headline said, Crane Wife, Memory Gone, Living With Jailed Groundskeeper. Husband Pleads For Her Return.
By noon it had twelve hundred comments.
By one o'clock her phone showed a voicemail from the house number.
It was Posy's voice, small and carefully level.
"A girl in the car pool says you're a bad lady and you left. Daddy says it isn't true, but he cried. Are you coming Monday?"
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