Husband Faked His Death and Left Me, Now He Regrets It, Sorry, You Can Only Repent at My Grave novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Porch

Geneva and Stewart talk for the first time in three years. He tells her about the river and the urn, she tells him about the cashier's checks. Her father sends her out, and the motel room is already paid for.

By nine o'clock the house had gone quiet.

My mother had fed me soup I couldn't finish and put me on the porch swing with a quilt.

I sat there with the March cold coming through the boards and watched my breath.

The screen door opened and closed.

Stewart stood at the top of the steps with his hands in his pockets.

"She's down," he said. "Junie. She sleeps hard."

"Good for her."

He winced.

He sat on the top step, a full arm's length from the swing, and for a while neither of us said anything.

"I used to rehearse this," he said. "What I'd say if I saw you again. I had whole speeches."

"Say one."

"I don't have any left." He rubbed his face. "Geneva, I stood on that bank for six weeks."

I waited.

"After the truck pulled us out, I kept going back down to the river. The sheriff's divers found your seat belt. Just the belt, cut clean. The current was so fast that January. They told me the bodies sometimes surface in the spring."

His voice didn't change.

That was the worst part, how flat it stayed.

"In March they had the service," he said. "Your dad asked me to carry the urn. He couldn't."

"It was empty."

"Yes." He looked at his hands. "I held it all the way up the aisle. I remember thinking it was too light to be a person."

I pulled the quilt up under my chin.

All winter in Tucson I had pictured the three of them in a casket, with my hands to blame for it.

I had never once pictured Stewart carrying an urn for me.

"Your turn," he said quietly.

So I told him.

The bed, the yellow bracelet, Beth's hand folded over mine.

His jaw moved when I got to his own name, and that was all.

The cashier's checks that came every month in a plain white envelope, for a year, and stopped the week I got my first real paycheck.

I told it fast and plain, and he didn't interrupt.

When I finished he was looking at the street.

"I don't believe she could do that," he said.

"I know."

"I'm not saying you're lying."

"You're saying exactly that, Stewart."

"No." He turned. "I'm saying she's the one who got me out of bed. For a year. She sat with me every night in the kitchen so I wouldn't have to be alone with it. She was the only one who could stand to hear me cry."

"And then you had a baby with her."

"Geneva."

"Three months after you buried me, Stewart. I did the math at the hedge. You didn't wait long."

He closed his eyes.

"Junie's mine," he said. "I'd never lie to you about that. She's mine, and I love her more than anything."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I can give on a porch."

I stared at him.

He looked back, showing no guilt, only a raw, exhausted weariness.

I looked at his left hand.

He saw me look and put it behind his knee.

"I thought you were dead," he said.

"I thought you were dead."

"I know. I heard you."

For one second the whole porch was very still, and for that second I almost believed him.

Then the door opened again, and my father stepped out.

His jacket was zipped to the chin.

He didn't look at Stewart.

"Beth's in the bathroom," he said to me. "She's been sick to her stomach for an hour. I've never seen her like this."

"Dad."

"She's crying and she keeps saying she's never lied to anybody in her life." He cleared his throat. "Your mother wants you to stay. I want you to stay. I just think tonight, for Beth's sake, and for the baby's, it might be better if you had your own place."

"My own place."

"For one night. Until it all settles. There's a motel on Route 6."

I looked at him for a long time.

He had dragged that river for six weeks, and he couldn't look me in the face.

"All right, Dad," I said.

I folded the quilt over the swing, picked up my duffel bag, and walked down the steps.

Stewart stood.

"Geneva, wait."

"Take care of your daughter," I said, and kept walking.

The motel on Route 6 had a buzzing neon sign and a clerk behind glass.

I had my card out before I reached the desk.

"One night, please. Cassidy."

The clerk glanced at his screen.

"You're already paid up, ma'am," he said. "Room nine. Through Friday."

"I haven't booked anything."

"Somebody called ahead this afternoon." He slid a key under the glass. "A woman named Beth."

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