At a Charity Auction, My Husband Sold My Best Friend the Seven Days He Promised Me novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Second Week of January

Evan came to the studio on Wednesday night with a bag of soup and a screwdriver.

I had called the charity chair that afternoon and told her the truth about the car, the cramp and the hospital.

She had said, "Thank you for telling me yourself," and that had been the end of the photograph.

Now the studio was dark except for one work lamp, and Evan knelt at the loom bench, tightening a leg that had never wobbled.

"It doesn't need that," I said.

"I know."

"You can stop."

"I'd rather not," he said. "If I stop, I'll have to talk."

I sat down on the floor beside him with the soup in my lap.

It was a clean dry silence, the kind I had not had with anyone in a long time.

"The card with Shelby's gift said to ask you about January," I said.

He put the screwdriver down.

"I found them the second week of January," he said. "Hotel receipts in her coat. The Edgewater, two nights a week for a month. I counted six."

"You counted."

"I put them back in the pocket. I told myself there was a reason." He looked at his hands. "I told myself I was never home. If a woman is married to a man who sleeps at the hospital, she's entitled to a few lunches."

"And in nine months you never asked."

"No."

"Not once."

"I thought if I asked, she'd leave."

"She left anyway," I said.

"She did. She just took her time."

I looked at the soup going cold in its paper cup.

I had meant to be gentle.

I had meant to be a woman who understood, who listened to his reasons and patted his arm.

I had meant to carry everyone's feelings and keep the house running.

It came out of me before I decided.

"January ninth was my birthday," I said.

He went still.

"Neil missed dinner. He said Milwaukee. I waited up with a cake, and I went to bed at two. In September I took the test, and I told the one person I trusted. The person whose hotel receipts you were holding."

"Bethany."

"If you had said a word in January, I'd have known. I'd have known before I told her. Before I spent a single day thinking she was holding my hand."

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