My Stepbrother's Regret novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: Seven Days

Roarke called every one of the forty guests himself.

I know because I heard him through the wall on Wednesday night, working down a list.

"Saturday, four o'clock, same lawn. No, Mrs. Gibbons didn't plan it. I did. Because I said I would."

My mother found out on Thursday.

She hugged me at breakfast in front of Myles and the housekeeper and said, "Isn't it wonderful, you two getting along."

Her nails left four half-moons in my shoulder.

All week we'd been like that.

Sweetheart at breakfast. Baby at dinner. In the hallway, nothing at all.

She didn't come for the watch.

She didn't have to.

She knew I'd been to Waukegan, because Lonnie told her.

She knew the pearls were back in Myles's box, because Roarke put them there on Sunday night.

He sat in his father's closet for a long time afterward.

What she didn't know was what I'd do on Saturday.

Neither did I, until I was standing on the lawn.

The tents were gone. It was just drinks this time, in the heat, by the water.

The guests had come out of curiosity, and you could see it.

There were club wives in linen holding white wine, and Myles's golf friends in visors.

A few store managers in company polos had driven up because Roarke asked.

Lonnie was there.

My mother had introduced him all over the lawn as her cousin from Tulsa, and he'd shaken every hand, and every hand had liked it.

Roarke came out of the house last.

He wasn't wearing the watch.

He walked straight to the spot by the lake where he'd stood with the microphone a week ago, and he looked at me.

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