He Hid Our Marriage for Two Years, So I Told the Whole Ballroom novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: What He Sold

Lachlan's POV

My mother keeps the Foundation's offices on the second floor of the house on Gaston Street.

She holds her meetings at a long table where my father once signed every bill.

On Thursday morning I walked into the middle of one.

Six women from the board sat with coffee and place cards.

My mother sat at the head, in grey wool and pearls, and looked up at me with a smile that did not touch anything.

"Lachlan. We're reviewing the spring budget. Can this wait?"

"No," I said.

"Ladies, would you excuse us?"

"No," I said again. "Please stay."

Nobody moved, which told me they had all read the same newspaper.

I put the folded certificate on the table in front of her.

I had been carrying it in my jacket since Tuesday.

I'd had it copied at the courthouse by a clerk who would not look at my face.

"When did you find this?" I asked.

My mother glanced at it.

"I believe you know."

"I'm asking you to say it in front of the board."

A woman at the far end of the table put down her cup.

My mother laid her hands flat on the wood.

"June of last year."

"Sixteen months," I said. "You sat across from me at Christmas dinner knowing."

"I sat across from you at Christmas dinner hoping you would tell me yourself."

"You could have asked."

"And be lied to again?" she said. "Lachlan, I did you the courtesy of letting you handle your own mess. Then you stood next to a girl from the Gadsden family and said not tonight, and I realized you wouldn't handle it at all."

"So you did it for me."

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