The Wife He Buried Alive novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Nine Days Before the Wedding

Four years later, Linnea walks into Winston's boardroom with divorce papers and the news that their son needs his blood.

Four and a half years later, a doctor told me my son's leukemia was back.

She said it in the hallway outside his room, with her hand flat on my arm.

"The chemo bought us time, but it won't hold," she said. "Milo needs a bone marrow transplant."

"Then find a donor," I said.

"We did. The registry has no match for him."

Milo carried a rare marker, and the doctor said it came from his father's side.

"A parent is the next best chance," she said. "Is his father in the picture?"

For four years I had told people the same thing.

"He's dead," I said.

The doctor looked at me for a moment.

"Then I'm very sorry. Any brother, cousin or uncle on his side would have to be tested at once."

I had no one on that side to give her.

I did have a husband.

He was thirty-eight now, and he was in every magazine in the waiting room.

I read the cover of the top one while the doctor talked.

GARRICK HOLDINGS CEO TO WED SATURDAY, the headline said.

Under it was a photograph of Winston with his arm around Juliet Carrow.

She was wearing a ring I had never seen.

I went back into Milo's room and sat on the edge of his bed.

He was three years old and nearly four, with a knit hat over his bald head and a gray stuffed elephant under his chin.

"Mama, is the doctor mad at me?" he asked.

"No, baby. She likes you."

"She said 'unfortunately' a lot."

Bev looked up from her chair by the window.

Bev was sixty and had found me on a riverbank once and never gone home.

She had driven us four hundred miles south for these specialists, and she had never asked me to go anywhere near the Garrick name.

"Bev," I said. "Can you stay with him this afternoon?"

She looked at my face and then at the magazine in my hand.

"Go," she said. "Take your papers."

I had kept them in my bag for two years.

A lawyer in our town had drawn up the divorce, and I had signed it at his kitchen table, and then I had never been able to mail it.

The Garrick Holdings tower stood on the riverfront, forty floors of glass.

The woman at the front desk smiled at me.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

"Mr. Garrick is in a board meeting. I can take your name."

I gave her the one I had used for four years.

"Lena Dahl," I said. "It's about his wedding."

She wrote it down and reached for her phone.

I walked past her to the elevators and rode up to the thirty-ninth floor.

The boardroom had a glass wall. I could see six people in suits around a long table, and Winston at the head of it.

He was talking, one hand flat on a folder.

He looked older. There was gray at his temples now, and a thin white scar across the back of that hand.

An assistant stepped in front of the door.

"Ma'am, you can't."

I put my hand on the handle and opened it.

The talking stopped.

Winston turned his head. His pen slipped out of his fingers and rolled across the table.

I had pictured this day many times, in the dark, in the northern town.

I had thought I would cry, or that he would.

He didn't move at all.

One of the board members, an older man with half-moon glasses, cleared his throat.

"Winston, who is this?"

Winston stood up so fast that his chair hit the carpet.

"Linnea," he said.

It came out as barely a sound.

"Linnea Garrick," I said, to the whole room. "His wife."

Nobody breathed. A woman at the far end put down her coffee very slowly.

I walked the length of the table and laid the papers in front of him.

"Sign these," I said. "Then you can marry whoever you like on Saturday."

He did not look at the papers. He looked at my face, and then my hands, and then my face again.

"You were in the river," he said.

"I was not."

"Linnea, the whole city..."

"I know what the city did. I was there."

His throat moved. Something crossed his face that I had not expected.

It was not guilt, and it was not surprise.

It looked like relief, and I did not trust it for a second.

"There is one more thing," I said, and I made myself keep my voice flat.

"Our son is sick, Winston. And you are the only person on earth who can save him."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend