He Shielded Her, So I Left the Club novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Result

Mara's POV

The president read the result himself, standing at the head of the table, in his reading glasses.

It was the next Sunday at four, and nobody had touched the cornbread.

I stood at the back wall again, with Jared beside me and Dot's husband on my other side.

Delilah sat at the middle of the table with her mother on her left and Hattie in her mother's lap.

Gage sat at his father's right, and he had not shaved.

"The prospect brought this from the lab this morning," the president said. "I'll read it as it is."

He unfolded the page.

"Gage Monroe is excluded as the father of the child. The probability is zero."

A sound went down the tables, low and long.

Gage did not move.

"Jared Slattery is the biological father of the child," the president read. "The probability is ninety-nine point nine nine percent."

He took off his glasses.

"Hattie is Callum's granddaughter," he said, and his voice broke on his brother's name. "She's a Monroe, after all."

Delilah came up out of her chair.

"It's a lie!" she screamed. "It's fake, they're all in it together, the whole club hates me!"

"Delilah," her mother said.

"He forced me!"

The whole room turned to her.

"Five years ago," Delilah said, shaking, with her finger pointed down the room at Jared. "He came to my door, and I was alone, and I was scared of him. I never told anyone. I'll swear it to the sheriff."

Jared didn't flinch.

He stood against the wall with his arms hanging at his sides, and he looked at me instead of her.

I put my hand flat on his chest.

"She came to his shop, crying, and she asked him in," I said clearly, to the whole table. "She wrote him in county that it was Gage's and that he should never say a word. That's not what a scared woman does."

"Sit down," Delilah's mother said.

"Mama."

"I said sit down. You are shaming yourself."

Delilah's mouth shook.

She grabbed her purse and shoved through the wives, and the front door banged behind her.

Hattie's grandmother held on to the little girl.

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