I Gave Him Half My Liver, Then He Sold My Father's House novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Story He Cannot Survive

I slide my untouched dinner plate toward Gregor and ask him to tell his partners what I contributed to the firm.

The table goes still around the roast beef, the polished glasses, and the little folded cards bearing everyone's names.

Gregor looks at the plate first. Then he gives the smile he uses when investors have asked a question he prepared for yesterday.

'Nell has had a difficult recovery,' he says. 'I think we should be considerate.'

'You have already been considerate for me. Tell them what I contributed.'

Mara sits beside him in a green silk dress, her fingers resting near his wineglass. She has not touched her food either. Perhaps they rehearsed the concern together.

The man opposite me shifts in his chair. He is one of Gregor's older partners, a builder named Adrian Pike whose name I remember from the accounts. The woman beside him owns the firm's largest commercial contract.

Neither of them knows me well enough to call this a scene. They know Gregor well enough to wait for him to control it.

Gregor sets down his fork.

'We have all contributed in different ways,' he says. 'Nell supported me emotionally when I was ill. Mara was the person who helped me through the worst of it. Both things matter.'

Mara lowers her eyes.

It is a careful division. I am given the past tense. She is given the living role.

'You told them she carried you,' I say.

Mara turns to me. 'I was there when he needed someone.'

'You were there after the debts were paid.'

Gregor's hand closes around his napkin. The movement is small. I would miss it if I had not spent years watching him hide panic beneath details.

'Nobody is disputing that you helped,' he says. 'But help does not make someone an owner.'

'No. Paperwork does.'

Adrian's wife gives a brief, uncertain laugh. It dies when nobody joins her.

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