The Diary of an Unloved Wife novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Nothing at All
Malachy took his phone out of his pocket.
He looked at the screen for a second.
Then he walked up two of Colleen's steps and turned it round so she could see it.
It was an email from her, with six photographs attached.
The subject line said "What she really wants."
"That's you," Malachy said. "Right?"
"Open it," Colleen said. "You deserve to know."
He pressed delete.
Then he went into the trash folder, pressed delete again, and showed her the empty screen.
"I don't read other people's mail," he said. "My mother would come out of Queens and kill me with a wooden spoon."
The old man at number nine folded his newspaper in half.
Colleen's face went pink under her freckles.
"You're an idiot," she said. "She's still in love with him. It's all in there."
"Then I guess I'll never know."
He put his phone back in his pocket and came down the steps to me.
A black car turned into the square and stopped at the curb.
The driver got out and lifted Colleen's suitcases into the trunk without a word.
She got in the back and didn't look out of the window once.
The car went round the square and down the hill.
The spaniels watched it go.
We went back across the snow.
At my front door I stopped with the key in my hand.
"Why didn't you look?" I said.
Malachy leaned on my railings.
"You remember my thing about diaries?"
"Nobody writes for nobody. Everybody hopes someone reads it."
"Yeah. I was wrong." He scratched his jaw.
"Or I was wrong about you. You wrote it for nobody, and somebody broke in."
"I'm not going to be the second guy through the window."
I looked at him in the cold with my key in my hand.
"So what do you want out of my diary?"
"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. Not one line. Write whatever you like about me, and I'll never know if it's good."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Diary of an Unloved Wife are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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