The Wife He Buried Alive novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: What We Each Saw

"You used my funeral as bait," I said.

"Yes."

"You let the whole city watch you hold that woman's hand for four years."

"I never held her hand."

"Then what did you do?"

He pushed his fingers through his hair. His voice, when it came, was low and ragged.

"I let her think she was winning. I let her talk about the wedding. I took her to dinners and I smiled for the photographs, and every night I came home and sat in this room and read that file."

"Why her?"

"Because someone called me at twenty to eight on five anniversaries in a row," he said. "I did not see it until after you were gone."

"After," I said. "You didn't see it for five years."

"No."

"I sat at a table for two for five years, Winston."

"I know."

"Do you? You looked at the phone and you went. And I smiled and said it's fine."

"I thought you meant it."

I stared at him.

"Every time I came home, you said 'it's fine,' and you made tea," he said. "I told myself you didn't mind. I wanted so badly to believe it that I never asked once."

His shoulders had dropped, and his voice had gone quiet.

"I was a coward," he said. "It was easier to go than to stay and look at the empty chair I had made."

I felt it land. I wanted it to land harder than it did.

"I said it's fine because I was afraid you'd stop coming home if I said what I thought."

"Linnea."

"Don't."

"I thought you left," he said. "On the steps of that hospital, when you said you'd been at the funeral. I thought, she was alive and she watched me bury her, and she never came."

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