Free Discovering Normal by Cynthia Henry

raised the paper closer to their view. “Chris would never do something like this without at least trying to achieve what he wanted first. I just know it.”
    Deej cleared his thick throat. “Normally I’d agree, Bethie, but the circumstances are unique.”
              Beth looked at the legal paper in her hand. She’d purchased every item this house and Chris’ barn office possessed. She’d placed an order at Office Mart just the week before and she’d ordered white legal pads, not yellow.
    “This isn’t our paper.”
    “Beth , darlin ’ --”
    But she cut Deej off with a shake of her head. “Come on, Deej. You’re the one who taught me to disregard nothing and never, ever ignore instinct.”
    Larry cleared his throat. “The handwriting is his, Beth. We had it analyzed with some stuff we found in the barn. That’s why I have it with me. I just got the results.”
    Beth shook her head and sucked in a raggedy breath. “None of this makes any sense.” She hopped up, lunged for the back stairs, raced up them, down the hallway and into the room she and Chris had shared for eleven years. The bed was stripped of sheets and a few items of clothing were scattered over the upholstered chair in the corner. The room was quiet and still--so different from the commotion that always seemed to be taking place somewhere even long after she and Chris had stopped talking. She took in the neatly framed prints she’d searched for to match the toile wallpaper and the curtains she constantly adjusted to ensure that they were falling against the sill just so.
    Her eyes traveled back to the bed. She’d changed the sheets the morning she’d left and she’d never known Chris to care if they were crisp and April-fresh anyway. Beth fell to the bed and ran her hands up and down her arms though the room wasn’t cold. 
    What in God’s name was going on?
    She closed her eyes and tried to think. Admittedly she was rusty on procedure and hadn’t taken part in any operations since before her own brainwashing, but there were things she still recalled. The first lesson any agent - in - training was ever taught was to never underestimate inherent intuition. The facts she knew for certain were limited and random, but it was a start.
    Aside from the obvious--the absolutely uncharacteristic move of Chris committing suicide--there were several other indications that something was off, strange, different. The green pepper. Chris detested green pepper and could find the tiniest minced piece in any potato salad. Why were there the remnants of a pepper?
    Beth shook her head and gave a sinister chuckle. She was reduced to putting stock into a pepper seed.
    But the stripped bed and yellow paper and the fact that he didn’t say more to Noah and Audrey on the phone than, “ Enjoy your first day of school ” and “ Keep Mommy company when Noah goes to fifth grade ,” made it even stranger. Her mother had sat in the room and relayed most of the conversation to Beth--simple pleasantries between a father and his children who missed him. No, “ You’re my world, my life ; my everything . ”
    Beth looked around the area she knew so well and took that final, crucial assessment. She stood up and walked to the laundry room just off their private bath. Sure enough, the 480 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets that her mother had sent for Christmas were stuffed into a twisted heap in the dryer. Beth slammed the white metal door.
    Then like a bolt of something fast and needy, she flew down the stairs.
    “Jack! Jack!”
    Jack stepped into the kitchen from the back porch where he’d been smoking a cigarette with the mopey Sundance at his side.
    “Jack, who did he sleep with?”
    Ramona sucked in a breath and laid her hand over her mouth. Larry and even the wizened Dee j looked uncomfortable as hell, but Beth was relentless . “Tell me who it is because I know there was someone. Who did he sleep with?”
    Jack crushed the butt into the