My Husband Buried Me in Gossip, So I Came Back With His Brother novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Back Lot

After cleanup, Jo and Dale compare what they remember in the Rieder Hardware back lot and agree on a year and two rules, then Todd asks her where she parked.

Dale's truck was already in the back lot of Rieder Hardware when I walked up from Sandusky Street.

I had parked a block and a half away, behind the Methodist church.

Dale had told me to, when he took the plate out of my hand.

"Back lot, nine o'clock," he'd said. "Park where nobody looks."

I was carrying a foil pan of leftover cake as my reason for being out.

He sat on the open tailgate in the glow of the loading dock light.

An old beagle with a gray muzzle lay beside him on a folded moving blanket.

"That's Biscuit," Dale said. "He's not a good guard dog."

Biscuit thumped his tail once at me and went back to sleep.

I sat down on the other end of the tailgate.

The metal was cool through my slacks, and the whole back lot smelled of sawdust and fertilizer.

The sign over the dock said RIEDER & SONS in letters his father had painted.

Dale had not worked there in three years.

"I woke up at six this morning," he said. "My ex-wife's coffee mug was on the counter. I broke that mug in March."

"When did you die?" I asked.

He took a moment.

"Two weeks after you did. County Road 99, a wet night, a tree. I don't remember much but the tree."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't be," he said. "I got to be useful for fourteen days."

"By banging on a desk," I said.

"Somebody had to."

He tried to smile, and I tried to smile back, and neither of us managed it.

He told me what he had seen.

He had stood at the Thanksgiving table and told his mother to stop.

The school board had put his name on a complaint the next Monday.

By the time they told him where I was, I was already in the locked wing, and Todd had already filed.

I told him the rest.

I told him about the doctor.

I told him about Marty next door, who had called the sheriff twice because I was "wandering at night."

All I had done was stand on the porch and count to a hundred.

I told him that the last thing I remembered was his voice in the hall.

Dale looked at his hands.

There was an old cut across his left thumb that had healed crooked.

"Where are the kids?" he said.

"Asleep. Both of them are upstairs at home, and Todd went to his mother's to cool off."

"Good." He breathed out. "Good."

"I'm not going to lose them," I said.

"No."

"And I want them to hear every word. The doctor. The pills. The hold."

"I want your mother to say it with the whole church listening," I said.

"She will," Dale said. "It's how our mother is built. She'll say anything in front of people if you give her people."

I looked at him.

"We have no proof," I said. "Nothing's happened yet. If I go to a lawyer, I'm an unhappy wife with a story."

"So we don't prove it," he said. "We get there first."

"First where?" I asked.

"Every room," Dale said. "You know this town better than anyone. You know who owes whom a casserole."

"And you know who trusts a coach," I said.

"Todd had a girlfriend by Thanksgiving," Dale said. "I'm guessing she exists already."

"Four months," I said. "Brandi Whitacre. She's the Realtor on the bench."

He winced.

"We have until Thanksgiving," I said.

"We have longer than that," Dale said. "Todd's lender, the lease, the Chamber banquet in December. We have a year if we use it."

I held out my hand.

He looked at it and did not take it right away.

"Two rules," Dale said.

"Tell me."

"One. You're still married to my brother, and I'm still his brother. Nothing happens between us. Not while you're his wife."

I felt that land somewhere I wasn't ready to look at.

"That's fair," I said.

"And two. We tell each other everything we remember, the minute we remember it. No saving it for later."

"Agreed," I said. "And one of mine."

"Go," he said.

"The children are never used. Not to get information, not to send a message, not to pick a side."

"Nobody tells them anything they have to carry," I said.

"Agreed," Dale said, and then he shook my hand.

His palm was warm and dry and rough with callus, and I let go first.

On the walk back to my car I took out my phone for the first time that night.

In the first life, Todd had put a tracking app on it at Christmas.

It would ping his phone the second I left the house.

I stood under the streetlight on Sandusky and watched the screen.

Nothing pinged.

No text came from him either.

I drove home with the foil pan on the seat, parked in the driveway, and let myself in the kitchen door.

Todd was sitting at the table in the dark, still in his birthday shirt.

He did not turn the light on.

"Where did you park tonight, Jo?" he said. "I drove down Main Street twice, and your car wasn't there."

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