15 Days Before I Left Him novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Lumberyard

Raylan's POV

I found my brother in the lumberyard office on Wednesday morning, standing at a desk covered in papers he wasn't reading.

Maddox Lumber had been my father's, and then it was Roscoe's in everything but the deed.

Through the window behind him, two forklifts were moving pallets of cedar across the yard.

The men on the forks slowed down when they saw me walk in.

Everyone in Hollis County knew whose car Clara had left in.

"Raylan." Roscoe's face was gray, and he had not shaved. "Thank God. Where is she?"

"Safe."

"That's not an answer." He came around the desk. "Mom says she tore up a check in a school office. In front of the parents. She's humiliating us, and she's doing it with you."

"Mom offered a woman a hundred thousand dollars to walk down an aisle."

"Mom was trying to fix it!"

"She was trying to buy it," I said. "There's a difference, and Clara knows what it is."

Roscoe stared at me.

He had always been the easy one, tall and warm and sure of his welcome.

I had spent my life being the brother who left rooms.

"You were supposed to be my best man," he said. "You walked out of my wedding to go get coffee, and you didn't come back."

"I did."

"With my fiancée."

"She wasn't your fiancée by then. She'd left her rings and a letter. Bea gave it to you at eleven, I assume."

His jaw worked.

"She's confused," he said. "Faye's sick and it's been a lot, and she panicked. If you'd just bring her home and let us talk, I'd forgive her. I'd forgive both of you."

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