I Chose a New Life novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Porch at Two A.M.

Bennett came at two in the morning, and he came loud.

I was awake on Rhoda's porch glider with a blanket, because I hadn't wanted to sleep in a bed with the door shut.

Cliff was in the rocking chair, three feet away, with his boots on.

He had stayed because I'd said he could stand on the porch, and he had taken it to mean all night.

Neither of us had mentioned the cabin.

Headlights swung across the front of the house.

A car jumped the curb and stopped with its front wheels in Rhoda's tomatoes.

Bennett got out and held on to the door.

"Della!" he shouted. "Della, come out here!"

Lights came on up and down the street.

Cliff stood up slowly.

"Stay behind me," he said.

"No."

"Then stay beside me."

I got up and stood beside him.

Bennett walked up the lawn with his tie pulled loose and his cuff links gone.

He smelled of whiskey from ten feet away.

"There she is," he said. "My wife."

"I'm not your wife," I said. "I never was."

"You took my ring!"

"I put it in your cake."

Behind me, an upstairs window slid open.

Rhoda leaned out in her nightgown with her phone held up.

"I'm live," she said. "Say hello to Bayfield, Bennett."

He squinted up at her.

"Put that away, you fat old witch."

"Three hundred people are watching you say that," Rhoda said cheerfully.

Doors opened along the block.

A man in a bathrobe came down his steps with a flashlight.

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