Arranged to the Don, Freed from the Lie novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Long Table
On Saturday morning the long oak table in the Great Hall held eight chairs, and every one of them was filled by a woman.
I took the head, because they told me to.
Rosalind sat on my right.
The cousin from Arizona, the cousin from Montreal and the woman from Hartford sat along the left side with their reclaimed trust papers in front of them.
The old woman in the pearl collar had asked for the chair at the foot, and nobody argued.
Edmund was not there.
He had left on Tuesday, for a sister's flat in Worcester, with one suitcase and his cane.
Nobody had gone to say goodbye.
Phoebe sat beside my mother, kicking one foot against the leg of her chair.
Santino stood against the wall behind me, because he had been told this was a meeting for the family.
"First item," I said. "The Harrow House mortgage."
I felt him shift.
"My husband holds it," I said. "Eleven million dollars. He bought it quietly over two years to keep the house out of the wrong hands."
"And now he'd like to give it to us," said the woman from Hartford dryly. "Wouldn't he?"
"I would," Santino said from the wall.
"Tear it up," said the Arizona cousin. "Please. I'll hold the matches."
"No," I said.
Every head turned.
"No one gets bought in this house, and no one gets given to either," I said. "If the family accepts a gift of eleven million dollars from a Carraro, the next Crowninshield girl will inherit a house that someone else owns."
"Helena," Rosalind said gently.
"I mean it. The trust buys the mortgage from him at exactly what he paid. We pay it off over twenty years, out of the boats. We sign. It's ours."
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