RAINBOW MAN, Chapter 20

A serialized novel by best-selling author David W. Berner

Welcome to Rainbow Man, a serialized novel about a grieving widower who travels to Spain to find solace and restart a life only to find himself entangled in the counterculture past of a younger woman.

Summary of Chapter 19: Robert returns to God for answers and recalls a time he believed he failed as a father and a husband.

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Chloe had arranged her things as if she were preparing for a weekend away. On the bed was a small canvas satchel. It held two old cotton t-shirts, both black, ones she sometimes slept in, two pairs of shorts, one tan and the other white. Two pairs of panties, one white the other black. She had taken everything out of her purple makeup bag and replaced what had been there with a tin of lip balm and a toothbrush. What’s the point? she thought, smiling, and holding the brush her in hand for a moment. She placed it inside anyway. And in the side pocket of the satchel, wrapped in hand cloth, she had packed the small stone Indalo carving, the one from the rented apartment near Velez Blanco where she and Robert had traveled. Chloe had taken it from the shelf above the bed before leaving. I will return it, someday, she had thought then. She knew now that would never happen. Also, in the satchel, the blue dress she had worn on the morning she met Robert at the market. It would the last thing she would wear along with a necklace, a gift from her mother many years ago, a small white pearl on a silver chain. She wore it as she zipped the satchel closed. After lighting a candle and placing it on her nightstand, Chloe rested on the bed, her packed bag at her side, her eyes open to the ceiling.