Room 14's Secret: The Heiress Who Outsmarted Her Betrayers novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Harbor
"Where are you right now?" I said.
"In my car." She laughed, a bad, cracked laugh. "Outside my own apartment. They've got a man on the steps with papers."
"Do you still have the phone you gave me?"
"I have it."
"Then drive to Gloucester. Tonight. I'll text you the address."
"Adele, I can't afford a lawyer for this."
"You don't need to afford one. You've got mine."
Matthew had his own phone out before I'd hung up.
The orderly's headlights came down the lane at eleven.
By then my grandmother's attorney had filed a countersuit, called two newspapers, and gone back to bed.
The orderly sat in my grandmother's kitchen with her coat still on and a mug of cocoa she didn't drink.
"They said I stole records," she said.
"You photographed a ledger in a linen closet with a patient."
"That's what I said." She rubbed her eyes. "They didn't like it."
My grandmother came down in her dressing gown and pearls at midnight to inspect her.
She looked the orderly up and down.
"You're the one who changed the vials," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Every morning? For four days? After a night shift?"
"Yes, ma'am."
My grandmother nodded once.
"Good," she said, and went back upstairs.
The orderly stared after her.
"Was that good?"
"That was very good," I said.
In the morning, I took her down to the dock with two coffees.
The fog was lifting off the harbor. A lobster boat was going out.
"I'm starting a foundation," I said. "For women whose husbands had them committed. Lawyers, doctors who aren't for sale, beds when they get out."
"That's good."
"I need somebody to run it."
She looked at me.
"I'm an orderly."
"You're the only person in that whole building who saw a woman blinking and didn't look away."
She turned her coffee cup around in her hands.
"My mother was put away once," she said. "When I was nine. My father signed the papers."
"She was fine. She was just tired, and he wanted the house."
"Nobody at that hospital ever looked at her face."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Room 14's Secret: The Heiress Who Outsmarted Her Betrayers are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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