The Silence Between Us: A Vow to Return novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Unwell

Kendra was standing at the information desk in the hospital lobby, holding two coffees.

She saw me coming across the marble floor and smiled with her whole face.

"Hannah," she said. "I got you one. It's the oat kind you like."

I didn't take it.

I held up my phone with the column open.

"Who told you what I like?" I said. "Who told you I haven't been well?"

Her smile held for one beat longer than it should have.

"I told them to be kind to you," she said.

"You told a newspaper I'm unwell."

"You haven't slept in two days. You walked out on your husband at a restaurant and drove to a lake in the middle of the night. People are going to say things, and I got there before they did."

"By saying them."

"By saying them softly."

She set both coffees on the desk.

Two fingers tapped the wood, once, twice.

"You want a brother and I want a sister-in-law who doesn't hate me," Kendra said. "I'm trying to protect everyone."

"From what?"

"From a story where you're the wife who left him in the middle of his father's heart attack."

"I left him before his father's heart attack."

"Nobody will print that."

She said it gently, and she looked at me with sorrow.

That was the moment I understood it.

She hadn't written the column in a rage.

She'd written it in a good mood, with her hair tied back and her coat on a chair.

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