A Happy Family Without Me novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Fall Fair

I did not hug her back.

I kept my hands flat on the table, one on either side of the bandage box, and I let her hold on.

Lorna drew away at last and wiped under her eyes with two fingers.

"I know you're angry," she said, loud enough now for the cupcake table. "That's okay. I'd be angry."

"You said years," I said.

"What?"

"You said he told you I knew about you for years."

Her face stayed soft. Only her eyes moved, once, to the people nearest us.

"I said I wanted this to go differently, Fenella."

"You said years. I heard you. So I have a question."

I stood up.

I am five foot six, and I have spent a decade getting three hundred children to sit down for a shot, so my voice carries.

"Where was Garner every second weekend for eight years?"

The gym went quiet one table at a time.

The mothers at the cupcake table stopped talking. A father by the dunk tank lowered his phone.

"Sales conferences," I said. "That's what he told me. Every second weekend, Friday to Sunday, since Poppy was a baby. Lorna, you've only lived in Erie three years, so you tell me. Which conferences did you go to?"

"I don't know what you mean," Lorna said.

"Then I'll make it simpler. How long have you been with my husband?"

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