Chapter 23: My Turn

On Tuesday, the seventeenth of February, Sylvia served roast chicken at a table for twelve with four chairs filled.

Harrison had been trying to ask me since the gala.

He tried at breakfast on Sunday, over the sink on Monday, and in the elevator with a stranger standing right there.

Each time I put a finger on his mouth and said, "Not yet."

He took it every time without arguing.

Tonight he had been sitting very straight for an hour, and his hand kept going to his jacket pocket.

Pete saw it first.

"Is he okay?" my brother said, through a mouthful of potatoes. "He keeps touching his chest like he's having a heart attack."

"He's fine," Sylvia said.

"He's going to ask."

"I know what he's going to ask, Peter. Eat your chicken."

At the end of the meal, the housekeeper brought coffee and a plate of lemon bars, and Harrison pushed back his chair.

He stood.

He took a small velvet box from his pocket.

He put one knee on Sylvia's Persian rug.

"Kate," he began.

"Sit down," I said.

He stared at me.

"Sit down, Harrison."

"I've been practicing for three days."

"I know. I could hear you in the shower."

Pete choked on his coffee.

"Mom," Harrison said, appealing.

"Don't look at me," Sylvia said. "She hasn't said no."

He sat, slowly, with the box still in his hand.

I stood up.

I'd thought about this for a month, and my hands were not steady.

"On the eighteenth of January," I said, "I gave you thirty days and three rules."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Hid Me for Twelve Years, Now the City Knows My Name from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.