A Life Beyond Us novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Garage

Tom was in the garage with the door half open and a sander in his hand, though there was nothing on the bench to sand.

Bridget had dropped me at the house and driven off, saying she had a shift to sleep through and would be back by dinner.

I stood in the doorway until he switched the sander off.

"Darcy says you paid for Hugh to leave town," I said.

His shoulders came up around his ears.

"Did you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he asked me to." Tom put the sander down on the bench. "The week before our second wedding. He came to my door at midnight and said he couldn't stand next to me at the altar and watch me marry you."

"He said that?"

"He said he'd been in love with you since the fourth grade and he'd kept it quiet for twenty years because you picked me. He said if he stayed, he'd eventually do something to wreck it."

"And you got him a job."

"A friend of mine from Ohio State runs a practice in Montana. I called and talked him into hiring Hugh. Hugh had no money, so I covered his first year of rent."

"You paid him to go away."

"I paid so that he could."

I came into the garage and shut the door behind me.

The air smelled of sawdust and machine oil, and the overhead bulb threw a hard yellow light across the bench.

"You decided I loved him," I said. "Years ago. You decided it, and you never asked."

"I read your notebook."

"The notebook has no names in it."

"It didn't have to. When I read the list, I saw the two of us at the end of it, and I knew who stood in the corner of every picture of us since we were eight."

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