Second Choice Wife novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Mother

Heath got to his feet.

He didn't try to straighten his shirt or hide the tear in his voice.

"Yes," he said. "It's true, Mother."

Eleanor came down three steps and stopped.

"Eugene Depew got you ninety days," she said. "The prosecutor wanted five years."

"He did that so Bridget wouldn't be charged."

"That's what you say."

"That's what happened."

"I sent that man a case of bourbon every Christmas for ten years." Her voice shook, high and thin. "I sat beside him at your father's funeral. I thanked him. I told him he'd saved my son's life."

"He saved his daughter's."

"You are lying." She said it very quietly. "You're lying because this girl has talked you into it. Because you've lost your head over a librarian."

"Eleanor," I said.

"Don't you speak."

"Then I'll let him."

Heath unbuttoned the bottom of his shirt, just enough, and pushed it up on the left side.

A long pale scar ran across his ribs.

"You remember this," he said. "I came home from county with a bandage on it. You asked what happened, and I said I fell. You never asked twice."

"A man cut you," she said. "In the yard."

"Because I wouldn't tell him who I was covering for. He thought I'd sold someone out. I hadn't, but I couldn't say why."

Eleanor stared at the scar.

I watched the knowledge reach her face slowly.

She had been a good liar herself for years.

She knew what one looked like.

"Your father said you were reckless," she said at last. "He said you'd always been. That you needed to learn."

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