I Signed Away Eight Million to Leave Him novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Witnesses

I pulled on my jeans and took the attic stairs three at a time.

Corbin came down behind me, buttoning his shirt.

By the time I opened the front door, half the street was watching.

The woman on the second-floor porch next door had come out in her bathrobe with a coffee. Two kids had stopped their bikes.

Honora didn't look at any of them.

She looked at me, in my jeans and bare feet, and at Corbin behind me with his shirt half done.

"How sweet," she said. "The whole family."

"What do you want?" I said.

"I came to speak to your mother."

My mother didn't move from the walk.

"Then speak," she said. "I've been on my feet for eight hours."

Honora gave her the cold perfect smile.

"Mrs. Gorman. I'm told you still owe forty thousand dollars on this house."

"Forty-three. There's interest."

"After the twentieth of June, I'll clear it. Every cent." Honora's eyes came back to me. "If your daughter is out of that hotel before my son's wedding party arrives on Saturday."

"Why?" I said.

"Because my son wobbles when you're in a room. I'd like him not to wobble."

The woman next door put her coffee down on the rail.

My mother looked at Honora for a long time.

"I've worked nights for thirty years," she said. "I've had men offer me money to look the other way at a bedside. You're not the worst I've met."

Honora lifted her chin.

"You're just the best dressed," my mother said. "Get off my steps."

The woman next door laughed out loud.

Honora's color came up from her pearls.

Corbin came down past me onto the walk.

"I've read your texts to Margaux," he said. "'Get me something I can show him.' 'Good girl.' If you come near Neve's mother again, every director on that board reads them too."

Honora didn't even blink.

"Read them to the board, then," she said. "Brennan's the one who used those pictures, on a stage, in front of the whole world. You'd hang your brother's boy to hurt me? You won't. You're the decent one."

She turned toward her car.

"And on the twentieth my son signs the Lorillard agreement. After that, I won't need any of you."

She stepped back off the curb and knocked the plastic flamingo flat with her heel.

"Pick that up," my mother said.

Honora got into her car.

My mother picked up the flamingo herself, stuck it back in the grass, and went inside to bed.

That week I worked in the Sea Cliff with my mother's voice in my head.

On Friday night the hotel was ours for the last time. The wedding party would take every room in the morning.

The staff had gone down to the kitchen. The owner was asleep.

Corbin found me on the stairs to the eaves, with gold on my fingers.

"Take me up," he said. "I've never been past the third floor."

"There's nothing up there but my bed. And it sings."

"I'd like to hear it."

I took his hand and pulled him up the narrow stairs into my room under the roof.

He pulled the pencil from my knot and my hair came down all at once.

"Sit," he said.

"I'm not a dog."

"Sit on the bed, Gorman."

I sat.

The iron frame sang one low note under me.

He knelt and took off my shoes.

Then my socks, one at a time, slow, his thumb dragging down the arch of my foot.

I reached for his sweater.

He caught my wrist and put it back on the quilt.

"Last time you undressed me," he said. "This time I want you still."

"You're going to undress me standing up in a room with a slanted ceiling."

"I'll manage."

He stood and pulled me to my feet.

His fingers went to the buttons of my shirt.

One.

Two.

Three.

Each one opened a little more of me to the sea air through the round window.

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