He Invited His Ex-Wife Home, But She Was Here for Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Box Marked Min

Kaitlyn finds six years of Mindy's things boxed in the garage; Glen explains it smoothly, and Mindy says it is not even all of it.

I did not go to the clinic.

I drove back to the house while they were all still at the table.

The front door was locked, but I have a key, and I am still on the deed.

The house was very quiet.

I stood in the hall and looked at the walls.

Our wedding photo. Glen's parents. Glen on a ski lift. Glen and Gabe at a lake, sunburned, about ten and seven years old.

Mindy had been married to this man for three years, and nothing of her hung here.

I went room to room.

Glen's office had a shelf of binders, and I checked every spine.

The bedroom closet held his suits and my coats.

The hall cabinet held albums. I took them down one at a time and turned the pages.

Not a single picture of her.

In two years and four months, I had never asked to see one.

That is a hard thing to admit to yourself, standing on a stool in your own hallway.

I went to the garage last.

It smells like cut grass and cold concrete, and Glen keeps it neat.

The shelves along the back wall are labeled in his square handwriting.

Tools. Camping. Holiday. Kaitlyn's Garden.

On the bottom shelf, behind the Christmas bins, there was a cardboard box with one word on the side.

Min.

I knelt and pulled it out.

It was not taped shut.

On top lay a blue ceramic dish, the kind you leave your rings in.

Under it were a gardening hat, a pair of reading glasses, a paperback with the cover torn off and a woman's cardigan folded in tissue paper.

Under that was a green folder.

The tab said Addresses.

I opened it.

It held index cards, each one in Glen's writing. A street, a city, a month and a year.

The first card said Portland, Oregon, six years ago.

The next said Eugene. After that came Bend, then Boise, then Missoula, then a town I had never heard of.

Every card had a line through it, except the last.

The last one had no line.

It had a date from this March and an address in Spokane Valley, in blue ink.

"Kaitlyn."

I turned around.

Gabe stood in the open garage door with the afternoon behind him.

"You followed me," I said.

"I drove here ahead of you. I've been in the driveway ten minutes." He looked at the box and then at the folder in my hand. "Don't say anything yet. Let him say it first."

"Say what?"

"Whatever he says."

A car turned into the driveway.

It was Glen's gray sedan.

He got out of the driver's side. Mindy got out of the other.

Glen walked up the drive slowly. He saw the box and his face did not change.

That was what frightened me. His face did not change at all.

"You've been in my things," he said.

"I've been in my garage," I said. "What is this?"

He looked at the folder. He turned his watch around once.

"She was my wife for three years, Kaitlyn. When she left I couldn't throw her away. A lot of people would understand that."

"You wrote down every city she ran to."

"I wanted to know she was safe."

"For six years?"

"Yes." He said it flatly. "For six years. Because I'm not a man who stops caring just because someone's gone."

It was a very good answer.

It was the kind of answer I would have believed a week ago, and I could hear how good it was.

"There's a card from March," I said. "With an address in the Valley."

"She wrote and told me she was moving back," Glen said. "I looked it up. That's all."

I turned to Mindy.

She stood at the edge of the garage with her arms crossed and her face carefully empty.

"Did you write to him?"

Mindy took a long time.

"No," she said.

Glen's jaw moved.

"Mindy, you're confused," he said. "You wrote me in February. We talked about this."

"I didn't write you anything, Glen."

"Kaitlyn." Gabe was at my shoulder now, his voice low. "Let's go."

"I'm not leaving my own garage."

"Please."

I looked at the card with the date from this March. I looked at the man who had built a shrine to a woman who had left him and then married me in her place.

I put the folder in my bag.

Glen stepped forward. "That is mine."

"Then take it," I said. "Go on. Take it from me in front of your brother."

He didn't.

Mindy let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. She put the back of her wrist to her mouth.

She was looking at the box, not at me.

"You should see the rest of what he kept," she said quietly. "That's not even all of it."

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