The Wife Isn't Me novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Visitor

The investigator left her card on the arm of the rocking chair.

"Keep everything," she said at the door. "Every page."

"I always do."

"I know. I've seen your filing at Mercy." This time she did smile. "It's the cleanest in the state. That's partly why I believe you."

When she was gone, I sat in the rocker with my daughter and didn't move for an hour.

Andrew made me a grilled cheese.

It was burned on one side and raw on the other, which I hadn't known was possible.

I ate all of it.

The week went by in two-hour pieces.

Feed. Burp. Change. Cry, sometimes her, sometimes me.

The lab in Pennsylvania emailed to say the samples had arrived and results would take three to four weeks.

On the last Sunday in April, Andrew came upstairs and knocked on the open door.

His face was careful.

"Oscar Wentworth is downstairs," he said. "He came alone. He's been standing on the sidewalk for twenty minutes."

I looked at my daughter, asleep in the crooked crib.

"Did he say what he wants?"

"He said he wants to see her. He said please." Andrew paused. "I've never heard a man say please like that. Like it cost money."

I could have said no.

I thought about it for a long minute.

"He can come up," I said. "You stay in the room."

"I wasn't going to leave."

Oscar had to duck under the slanted ceiling at the top of the stairs.

He looked terrible.

His suit was the same navy, but the shirt underneath was wrinkled, and he'd missed a patch shaving on his jaw.

He looked at the pizza-box coffee table and the oak dresser that smelled strange and the crib that leaned.

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