His Wife Her Secret Their Regret novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: Vernon's Kitchen

I crossed the truck stop lot with the wind pushing at my back.

Delilah stood on the sidewalk behind me with Connie's arm around her.

Vernon rolled the window down when I reached the truck.

He looked ten years older than he had in the bank.

"I didn't come to argue," he said.

"Then why are you here?"

"To ask you to come to my kitchen. You and my son."

"Why would I?"

"Because there's a thing I never told either of you, and I'd like to say it sitting down."

I looked at his hands on the wheel.

They were shaking, and he had put them at ten and two to hide it.

"I'll call Dean," I said. "He drives me. You don't."

He nodded once.

An hour later I sat in Vernon Ruskin's kitchen on a chair with a cracked vinyl seat.

The house was on the north end of Mill Road, small and square, with a lamp in every room that was never on.

Dean sat across from me with his hands flat on the oilcloth.

He had come straight from the garage and still had grease on his wrist.

He hadn't looked at his father since he walked in.

Vernon stood at the stove with his back to us, running water into a kettle that he never put on the burner.

"I want to tell you about your mother," he said.

Dean's head came up.

"You don't talk about her," he said.

"I know. Sit and let me."

Dean sat.

"She was pregnant the year you turned nine," Vernon said. "A girl. Seven months along, and the baby came too early and never took a breath."

Dean's face went still.

"I buried her in four hours. I didn't let your mother hold her. I told the table it was a private matter, and I told your mother not to speak of it to the wives."

"Pop."

"She wanted to name her out loud. I said no."

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