All Chapters of HIS DISCARDED WIFE : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

My husband hadn't visited me in four weeks.I checked my phone again.No missed call. No message. Nothing from Jack."Are you going to eat that or just stare at it like it insulted your family?"I turned my head too fast. The room tilted, then settled."Georgina.""Don't sound so shocked. I do visit." She dropped a paper bag on the tray table, grease spots already soaking through the bottom."Onion rings. Don't ask how I got them past the nurse's station. Actually, ask. It's a good story.""Tell me.""I told her I was your sister and you were having a craving. She said sisters don't usually look this different." She pointed between us, her dark hair against my washed-out blonde. "So I said, half-sister. Dramatic family history. She let me through out of pity."I laughed, and it hurt my ribs, and I didn't care.The IV line pulled when I shifted upright. I checked my phone one more time out of habit.Still nothing. Georgina saw it. She saw everything."How was round four?" she asked."L

The porch light was on. It was never on. Jack thought it wasted electricity. There was a car in the driveway I didn't recognise. Low, black, expensive in a way that wasn't Jack's taste. My phone was still in my hand, the unknown number still open on the screen. You should be more careful about whom you trust. I put it away. Whoever sent it could wait. I paid the driver with a hand that wasn't quite steady and let myself in through the side door — the one that didn't creak. "Jack?" Nothing. "Jack, I'm home. I need to talk to you." My own voice sounded far away, like it was coming from the next room instead of my own throat. The hallway was too long. It had never been this long before. Then I heard it. Laughter, upstairs. Low and easy. The kind you only make with someone you're comfortable with. Georgina's laugh. Everything else dropped out. The refrigerator hum. The clock on the wall. Just her laugh, looping, too loud, filling the whole staircase. I told myself there w

I sat in the car outside longer than I meant to, engine ticking as it cooled, every light in the house already on like someone was expecting me.I only came for what was left of my things. A few boxes. My mother's necklace. The albums Jack never wanted on the mantel because they made the house look — his words — too lived-in.Then I got out, before I could talk myself into driving away.The front door wasn't locked. Nobody in that house expected me to come back.Jack was waiting in the entryway."You can stop pretending," he said."Pretending what, Jack?""That you don't know why I stopped loving you.""I don't know why." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I've spent two days trying to figure out what I did, and I keep coming up with nothing, Jack."He pulled his phone from his pocket instead of answering and swiped it awake.A photograph. Me, standing close to a man in a white coat, our heads bent toward each other outside a hospital entrance."Who is that?""You tell me."He s

Keeping a secret began with a twenty-four-hour pharmacy off the interstate.One register open at 1 a.m. A cashier younger than my marriage, watching a small TV mounted above the cigarettes. The box I put on the counter was small enough to hide in one hand, and I hid it anyway.She rang it up without a word. When our eyes met, she didn't smile, which was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in three days."Bag?" she asked."Please."I paid with my dead father's money and drove past two motels before stopping at the third. The first two had cameras at the office door. The third took cash through a slot in bulletproof glass and didn't ask for a name, which was lucky, because I'd stopped being able to answer to my own.The room smelled like bleach and other people's emergencies. I locked the door, wedged the chair under the handle, and sat on the bed still wearing my coat.The box sat on the nightstand between the ice bucket and the Gideon Bible.I watched the little window the way I'

The first thing I knew was the beeping.The second thing was the horn still sounding, somewhere behind my eyes, a long, fading note that took its time leaving.The third thing was my hand. It was already on my stomach. I'd put it there before I was awake enough to decide to, the way you reach for a person in the dark.A tube tugged at the back of my hand when I moved. I didn't care. Two heartbeats, he'd said. Both of them. Strong. I held the words the way I'd been holding my father's envelope, like warmth that vanishes if you loosen your grip."Lauren." Nichols's voice, close on my left. "Lauren, before anything else, before anything, they're fine. Both of them. Strong heartbeats. You hear me?"I made a sound that wasn't a word, and he didn't make me find a better one."Bruised ribs. Concussion, mild. Your body did what bodies do when they refuse to quit." His hand settled on my shoulder, briefly, professionally, and the steadiness in it did more than the morphine. "You were hit cross