Not His Bride Anymore novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Library

On Tuesday, Savannah found me at the library.

I was shelving picture books in the children's room, between a toddler eating a board book and a father reading aloud in a dragon voice.

She stood at the end of the aisle holding two paper cups.

Her eyes were swollen.

She had on the gray coat I had helped her pick out in college, and she held out the left cup.

"Oat milk, one sugar," Savannah said. "I didn't forget."

I did not take it.

I took out my phone instead and pressed record, and I put it face up on the shelf cart where she could see the red light.

"If you want to talk, you can talk," I said. "It's being recorded."

She looked at the phone for a long time.

"Okay," she said. "That's fair."

We went to the reading nook behind the biography stacks, where the beanbags are.

She sat down in one, with the coffee in both hands.

"I'm not here to ask you to forgive me," she said.

"Good."

"I'm here because you deserve one true thing from somebody."

"Then say it."

"It started three years ago in March. Caleb's birthday. You were at your mother's for her hotel anniversary, and I took him a cake."

I did not move.

"He cried," Savannah said. "He told me he felt like a bank account for you. That you'd decided on him when you were eighteen and never asked again if he was happy."

"I asked him every year."

"I know."

"I asked him at our own table every anniversary, and you were sitting there."

She flinched.

"I know. I know I was."

"The bets," I said. "Whose idea was that?"

"Mine. The first one." She wiped her eye with her knuckle. "I wanted to see if he would let me win. He did, and then I couldn't stop. Every time you handed something over, it felt like..."

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