The Burning Road to Divorce After the Fire novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Girlfriend Trouble

Lainey's POV

Kurt put the thumb drive in my hand in the parking lot of the capital hotel and closed my fingers over it.

"It's from your grandmother's phone call," he said. "The three fifty-eight. I got it from the base. I've listened to it, and I'm sorry that I didn't tell you first."

"And the board?" I said. "And Brent?"

"He walked in on the hearing and talked for ten minutes," Kurt said. "He called the crew's statements a mutiny by men who wanted my job back."

"Did he see the drive?"

"No. It stayed in my pocket. The chair set the hearing for Monday and told him to sit down."

I looked at the little black thing.

I knew what was on it.

I had known for two weeks that something was.

"Is she afraid on it?"

"No."

"Is she asking him for anything?"

"She's polite," Kurt said, and his voice cracked. "She's very polite."

I put the drive in the pocket over my heart, next to Pearl's letter.

"I'm not going to play it now," I said. "I want to hear it tomorrow, with him in the room."

"That's a hard way to hear it."

"It's the only way I'll get through it."

He nodded once, and he put his forehead against mine, quickly, in the dark of the car park, and then he took it away.

"Melanie's inside," he said. "Brent's been on the stage since five."

The ballroom was empty except for a stage crew in black.

Four hundred chairs stood in rows with white cloths on the tables, and a long screen hung over the stage.

I sat in the last row in the dark beside a pillar, in a hoodie, with Kurt beside me.

On the stage, Brent stood at a lectern with a woman in a blazer and a clipboard.

I knew her from the gate video.

"And here," Brent said, with his hand out toward the dark, "I want a beat of silence. I want them to feel Pearl."

I went cold.

"Who's Pearl?" the woman said.

"The elderly lady who died on the road. It's a sad little footnote, but it humanizes the story."

I started to get up.

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