New Husband. Old One Gone novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: Eleven Seconds

Nobody touched the laptop.

The little gray square sat there at the bottom of the screen with a white triangle in the middle of it.

Two thousand pictures above it. Then that.

"Rosie," Mama said. "Turn the sound up."

I turned it all the way up.

Sawyer reached over and pulled the kitchen blinds, so there wouldn't be a glare.

Corey put both hands on top of his cane and held on.

I pressed play.

It was dark first. Green dashboard lights, swinging.

Then the camera steadied, and there was a speedometer, white numbers on black, shaking with the road.

The needle sat at thirty-eight.

It climbed.

Thirty-nine. Forty.

A hand came into the frame on the wheel.

It was a woman's hand, small, with the nails cut short.

On the ring finger, something gold and heavy caught the green light.

The engine was roaring. The whole cab rattled.

Then a woman laughed.

A high, bright, bored laugh, right next to the phone.

"Hold my coffee, Gwaltney," she said. "Watch this."

The hand turned the wheel, quick and showy.

The needle touched forty-one.

And somebody behind the camera laughed too.

I knew that laugh.

I'd know it in my grave.

It was too loud and it cracked in the middle, like it always did.

The camera swung up and around, and for one second it was his face.

Jesse.

Green light lay on his freckles and his buzz cut.

He was grinning at the phone with the gap in his front teeth showing, a paper coffee cup in his other hand.

"Bossman's gonna kill me," he said into the camera.

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