Chapter 13: Thanksgiving

"Then we take the gun away from him," I said.

Hutch didn't turn around.

"How?"

"He doesn't get to hang anything if he's explaining four point six million dollars to his mother's board."

He took his hand off the wall.

Then he walked to the stack of library books and turned Beatrice's card face up.

It had been lying there for a month.

"Mother keeps every board packet since 1991 in her study," he said. "Blue binders. She never throws anything out."

"And?"

"Every wire over fifty thousand goes in the packet with the officer's signature. The October buys go to the board in November."

"So the river painting's wire is sitting in your mother's house."

"Probably on her desk. The board meets the Monday after Thanksgiving."

I took the card out of his hand and read the last line again.

And Neve, while she is still a Winthrop.

"Then I'm still a Winthrop," I said. "Tell her we're coming."

Thanksgiving was cold and bright.

Fran lent me a black dress that was too short for Lake Forest and exactly right for me.

Hutch wore a tweed jacket over a clean flannel shirt.

He'd trimmed his beard in the bar bathroom with the light off, so one side was shorter.

I fixed it in the truck with Fran's nail scissors at a red light on the Edens.

"Eight years," he said, staring at the road.

"You can still turn around."

"I'm not turning around. I'm just saying it out loud so it stops being in my chest."

Beatrice's house sits on the bluff over the lake, gray stone, with a slate roof that's older than the bank.

A man in a white jacket opened the door before we knocked.

The front hall smelled like sage and furniture polish.

There were twelve at the table.

Three board members and their wives. Beatrice at the foot. Graydon at the head, in his father's chair.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.