The Bride He Replaced novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: What He Gave Up

Duncan's POV

Hannah looked at the dress and did not take it.

She looked at my wet shirt, then at the cleaner's bag, and then she looked at the older woman beside her.

"Bea," she said, "I'd like you to hear this too."

I had expected to be sent away.

I had practiced it on the walk from the car: a quick nod, no argument, and go.

Instead Bea held the screen door open and said, "Kitchen. You're dripping on my azaleas."

I sat at a table with a yellow cloth, and Bea put a dish towel in front of me and a mug in my hands.

Hannah sat across from me.

She kept her hands on her stomach, and she did not offer me anything.

"Say it again," she said. "All of it, to her."

So I did.

I told Bea what I had told Hannah in the car.

We married in Reno, in a chapel with a drive-through window we'd found funny at the time.

The account that went empty two years ago while I was away on a job in Ohio.

I told them it had held six years of savings, which I'd put aside to buy a run-down lake inn that I meant to rebuild.

I told them I had looked for Camilla in four states.

"And when you found her?" said Bea.

"She was a florist in Chicago, engaged to a Teasdale."

"And you didn't go to the police."

"I didn't know if I wanted her arrested or just to see her face." I turned the mug. "Then I learned who she was marrying, and I started thinking about it differently."

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