Chapter 9: Tuesday

Sawyer's POV

The man on the tailgate at the end of my wife's lane wanted fifty thousand dollars, and I had five minutes to decide what to give him.

It began six days earlier, in my office.

Lorna Carmody was waiting there with her coat on and her hands in her lap.

I had not seen her in five years. I knew her from the doorway.

I stood there with a hull drawing in my fist.

I did not know whether I was going to shout or be sick.

"Sit down, Sawyer," she said. "Please. I came to tell you something, and I'm going to say it fast."

I did not sit.

"Why did you leave?"

"Because I was paid to."

She took an envelope out of her bag.

"My brother had debts. A man came to our door eleven days before the wedding with a cashier's check for ninety thousand dollars."

"And?"

"He said I was to take it and go, and never contact you."

"Who?"

"Hugh Braithwaite."

I laughed. It was not a kind sound.

"Stevie's father?"

"He said his daughter had loved you since she was nineteen.

"He said you'd forget me in a year, and she'd be good to you."

She put the envelope on my desk.

"That's the stub. My brother kept it. I didn't know he did."

I picked it up.

The date was right. The name was right. The signature was a hand I had seen on a hundred supply invoices.

I stood there in my own office and thought of my wife.

Stevie, with paint on her cuffs.

Stevie, who had brought soup to the yard office every day the week Lorna left, and never said why.

Stevie, who had married me four months after the worst week of my life and never said a word about being second.

She did not know.

I was sure of it. She would never have lived beside me for five years and kept that behind her teeth.

"What do you want?" I said.

Lorna's eyes dropped.

"A place to stay," she said.

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