A Night With A Stranger novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Not a Favor

Jada's POV

Margaret Brodsky invited me to dinner at her house that same night.

She did it through Evan, in a voice that sounded like it hurt her to ask.

"Seven o'clock," he said. "She'll send a car. You don't have to go."

"I'll go."

"She said it's just the three of us."

"Then I'll wear the green dress again," I said, "and she can look at it."

The Brodsky house stood on a quiet street in Lincoln Park behind iron gates.

The dining room had a table for twelve, and only three places set at one end.

Margaret sat at the head in a plain gray dress with her pearls off.

She looked older without them.

The housekeeper brought soup and left, and the room was silent except for spoons.

"I resigned as chair this morning," Margaret said at last. "The board will vote on Evan's seat as though I had never held mine."

"I know," I said.

"I did not do it for you."

"I didn't think you did."

"I did it because I have been tidy for thirty years." She put her spoon down. "And because I do not know whether my son's girlfriend of three months exists, or whether I am seated across from an arrangement."

Evan went still beside me.

"Mother."

"I am asking her."

I looked at Margaret's hands, folded on the white cloth.

They were not quite steady.

She had come to the real question without any armor on, and I felt, to my surprise, that she deserved a real answer.

"On the first day," I said, "I made a rule. No fake 'I love you' in front of you."

"I remember. He told me."

"I broke a lot of rules this month."

"So I gather."

"I'm not going to say it as a favor to him," I said. "Or to you. I'll say it because it happened."

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