My Ex-Husband's New Wife Asked Me to Take Him Back novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Panel

Susie tells Gabe to his face, and he swears he never asked; they each make a rule, and Wim reveals Adele came to him first.

I told him at seven forty the next morning, before he got his van door shut.

I stood in the alley with my arms crossed and my apron still on.

Gabe came around the back of the van with a toolbag in one hand and a coffee in the other.

He saw my face and stopped.

"Your wife came to see me last night," I said.

The coffee tipped.

A little of it ran over his knuckles, and he didn't seem to feel it.

"She did what?"

"She asked me to take you back."

He set the coffee on the bumper very carefully.

He wiped his hand on his jeans.

"Sue."

"I thought you should hear it from me. Before she tells you, or before the whole town does."

"I didn't know," he said. "I swear on my mother's grave, I didn't know."

His voice had dropped, low and hoarse.

I had forgotten what it did to me when he swore on something real.

"She said she was doing it for you," I said.

"I never asked her for that."

"I believe you."

"I never asked anyone for anything." He rubbed his eyebrow with his thumb, right over the little white scar. "That's been the problem for about nine years."

I looked at the van instead of at him.

"You can have another electrician finish the panel," I said. "My father would understand."

"Do you want me gone?"

"I want to know why you were sitting outside the store last night."

He took a long time answering.

"I was going to come in and apologize for her," he said. "Then I realized I didn't know what she'd said."

"So you watched."

"So I watched."

It was almost funny.

Neither of us laughed.

"Come inside," I said. "You're letting the bugs in."

We were in the basement ten minutes later.

The basement of Haverkamp Hardware has a stone wall and a low ceiling and a smell like wet rope.

The old fuse box hung on the far wall.

Gabe set his toolbag on a sawhorse and didn't open it.

"I'm going to say this once," he said. "Then I'll do the work and you can tell me where to stand."

"Say it."

"Adele and I are not married in any way that counts. We haven't been since the first of September. She moved to her sister's. I've been in the house by myself with the TV on."

I kept my eyes on his collar.

"I never cheated on her," he said. "I want you to know that. I never touched anybody else, or called anybody, or went anywhere I wouldn't tell her about."

"I didn't think you had."

"I need it said out loud. For me."

"Okay."

"The hearing is November fifth. I won't ask you for anything before then. Not coffee, not a dinner, nothing."

His eyes were pale green, and steady.

They'd been that steady the day he signed the divorce papers, I'd been told.

I'd been in Chicago, signing mine with a pen I borrowed.

"That's a good rule," I said.

"I thought so."

"I want to add one."

"All right."

"No touching. Not a hand, not an arm, nothing. Not until the paper is signed."

I heard how stiff it came out.

Something moved in his face.

It wasn't hurt, and it wasn't a joke either.

"You think I'd try," he said.

"I think you wouldn't have to try."

The basement went still.

Upstairs, Bernie's register drawer banged open.

"Okay," Gabe said, quietly. "No touching."

He turned to the sawhorse and unzipped the toolbag.

I told myself I was going back upstairs.

I got as far as the shelf by the stairs, where we kept the wire nuts and cable staples in cardboard boxes.

I reached for a box of staples on the top shelf.

It was one inch past my fingers, and I am five foot ten.

Gabe came up behind me without a sound.

He reached over my head.

He didn't touch me, not my shoulder, not my hair.

His arm went past my ear with an inch of cold basement air between us.

I could smell him.

Soap, and copper, and the cedar chips he kept in his toolbox because his mother had kept them in her closets.

He took the box down and held it out to me at arm's length.

I took it.

Our fingers didn't touch.

I want to be clear about that, because my hand shook anyway.

"Thanks," I said.

"You're welcome."

"You're standing very close."

"I know." He stepped back. "I'll fix that."

I climbed the stairs fast.

At the top, I came out into the hardware aisle and nearly walked into a walker.

An aluminum walker with yellow tennis balls on its feet.

Behind it stood my father, in his suspenders and his store apron, six feet one and sixty-six years old, with Bernie hovering at his elbow.

He was breathing hard from the front steps.

He didn't look at all surprised.

"Don't look at me like that, Susie," Wim said. "I got dressed on my own."

"Dad. You're supposed to be on the couch."

"I heard the electrician's van." He lowered himself onto the stool by the key machine. "I figured somebody had better ask you what Adele told you."

I stared at him.

"How do you know she came here?"

"Because she came to my house first," my father said. "Back in September."

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