My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Terms

Graydon and Beatrice give Neve the choice in front of the staff: waive the settlement or watch the painting hang at the Christmas gala; she walks out, and Beatrice says Hutch's price is his alley.

I didn't answer him.

I turned the phone face down and lay awake until the window went gray.

At seven I called my sister.

Fran picked up on the first ring, which meant she'd seen the videos.

"Somebody auctioned their wedding ring at a Lake Forest bank party," she said. "It's all over my feed. Tell me it was you."

"It was me."

"Oh, I love you. Where are you?"

"A bowling alley in Avondale."

"Obviously. I'm coming."

She came in her dented red Corolla with two coffees and her hair still wet.

Hutch carried a coffee down to her car.

Fran looked him up and down through the window.

"Who's the lumberjack?"

"Graydon's brother."

"Shut up."

"I'll explain in the car."

"You'll explain right now, or I'm not putting this in drive."

So I explained in the parking lot of Moonlite Lanes, under the dead daytime neon.

The painter. The blue sheet. Six weeks. Nine thousand dollars.

The nurse who sat with Mom so I could go to class.

Fran's hands stayed on the wheel the whole time.

She was seventeen that winter.

I'd told her the money came from Mom's life insurance.

"There was no life insurance," she said finally.

"No."

"Mom died at home because of you."

"Mom died at home because she wanted to."

Fran wiped her face with the back of her wrist, careful of her nails.

"Eight years you carried that by yourself?"

"Yes."

"You're an idiot," she said, and grabbed me across the gearshift so hard my coffee spilled.

Then she let go and put the car in drive.

"I'm gonna need to see it, by the way."

"Absolutely not."

"I'm your sister. I'm entitled."

We drove north on the Edens with the radio off.

The house in Lake Forest sat at the end of its long gravel drive.

The front door opened before we reached it.

Graydon stood in the front hall in a gray sweater, fresh from a shower.

Beatrice stood beside him in pearls and a camel coat.

The housekeeper and two of the caterers from last night were still carrying vases out of the ballroom.

Nobody told them to leave.

"Neve," Graydon said. "And you brought the manicurist."

"Nail tech," Fran said. "And I'm also your sister-in-law, you lipstick-wearing turd."

One of the caterers dropped a vase.

Graydon didn't even look at her.

"My mother knows," he said. "I told her this morning."

Beatrice's eyes went over me.

"Four years at my table," she said. "And you never once thought we deserved to know what you'd done."

"I paid for my mother's nurse."

"You took off your clothes for money."

"Yes. For my mother. You'd have done it too, if you'd loved anything but a bank."

The housekeeper stopped walking.

Graydon took a folded document from the hall table.

"It's simple," he said. "This is a waiver of the settlement in our prenup. You sign it, you take your clothes and your car, and you go quietly."

"And if I don't?"

"Then the painting goes up in the bank lobby, and every client I have ever introduced you to gets an invitation."

"You don't own it."

He smiled.

"I will by Christmas. Hutch has never once held on to anything he couldn't afford."

"You spent the night at his place," Beatrice said. "Don't think the club hasn't heard that too."

"On his couch."

"No one will believe that, dear."

"I don't need anyone to believe it. I only need it to be true."

I looked at the document in Graydon's hand.

Three million dollars.

Four years of planning his parties and smiling at his board and painting alone in the attic.

"No," I said.

"Neve."

"No. I'm not signing anything. Fran, help me with the attic."

The attic stairs pulled down from the ceiling of the back hall.

My paint box was where I'd left it, under the eaves, behind the Christmas ornaments.

Half the tubes were dried out.

I took it anyway.

I took my mother's rosary from my nightstand, two suitcases of clothes, and nothing he'd ever bought me.

Fran carried the suitcases and glared at every caterer.

At the front door, Beatrice stepped into my way.

She was a head shorter than me and had never once had to look up at anyone.

"You think Hutch will save you," she said. "He's always been soft. He loves broken things."

"Move, please."

"Every man has a price, Neve."

She leaned in, her pearls cool against my arm.

"Hutch's is that alley."

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