The Wife Isn't Me novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Hearing

Oscar sat on the stoop for an hour.

Nobody asked him in.

Philippa took him a glass of water at the end of it and stood over him while he drank it.

"I'm testifying," she told him. "On the twenty-ninth. Against my father."

"I know," he said. "He told me to bring you home."

"Are you going to?"

He looked up at her for a long time.

"No," he said.

Then he got in his car and drove away, which was the most he'd done.

The hearing was on Monday, June 29, in the same small courtroom with the fluorescent lights.

This time the gallery was full.

Forty nurses had come again, on their day off, in their own clothes.

Andrew sat behind me, close enough that I could hear him breathing.

Edward Lowther sat in the front row behind the petitioners' table this time, with his cane.

Oscar sat at the end of that table.

The chair on his other side, the one for Philippa, was empty.

The judge came in, sat down and put her reading glasses on.

"Petitioners' counsel. I understand one of your petitioners has withdrawn."

Oscar's lead lawyer stood. "Mrs. Wentworth has been under considerable strain, Your Honor."

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