I Can Hear My Paralyzed Billionaire Husband's Thoughts novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Gold Digger

By nine o'clock there were forty reporters at the gate.

Beatrice's publicist stood in the front hall with a printed statement and a very expensive haircut.

"We say you're devoted," she told me. "We say the family is private. We say nothing about the Maddoxes."

"They're saying plenty about me."

"We rise above it."

In the next room the television was on.

My parents were sitting on a morning-show couch in their church clothes, holding hands.

"She was always troubled," my mother told the host, and dabbed her eye. "We tried everything. Then she kidnapped her own grandmother from a family celebration."

"We only want Clara to come home," my father said.

Delaney sat between them, in a pale pink suit, crying prettily.

"I forgive her," she said. "I just want my fiancé to be safe."

I stood in the doorway and watched myself get called a thief by the only people who had ever called me a daughter.

Upstairs, faintly, Damian's thoughts came down to me in a hard clean line.

Don't you rise above it. Go out there.

I turned to the publicist.

"I'll say it myself," I said.

"Mrs. Wicklow, with respect, that is the worst possible idea."

"I'll say it myself," I said again.

Beatrice looked at me for a long time.

Then she took the printed statement out of the publicist's hand, folded it in half, and gave it back.

"Let her," she said.

I went to the room off the kitchen where Grandma was having tea.

She had a quilt over her knees and a clean white nightgown.

"They're on the television," she said. "Your mother's wearing the green. She always wears the green when she's lying."

"I'm going out to the gate," I said. "Will you come?"

"In my nightgown?"

"You can wear your good robe."

Grandma smiled at me.

"I've been waiting twenty years to say something rude to that woman in public," she said.

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