Slapping Her Out of Her Delusion novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Eleven Letters
"Yes," Kendrick said.
Nobody else in the study moved.
"Maud asked me for one day to let your father say it. I gave her my word."
"You gave her your word," I said. "Last night you gave me a no."
"I know what I did."
"I asked you in your arms. I asked you plainly."
His mouth opened and closed, and he said nothing.
I let go of the chair.
I walked past my mother, past Preston, past Gwen frozen on the sofa with her hands over her mouth, and out into the hall.
The front door was already open, and it had started to rain while the lawyer read.
I went down the steps and across the gravel without a coat.
Footsteps came after me on the wet lawn, even and unhurried, and then not unhurried at all.
"Lydia. Stop."
"You carried the door."
"What?"
"That's what you told me in the boathouse. 'I carry the door.'" I turned around.
The rain ran into my eyes, and I let it.
"I thought you were the one person in that house who wasn't managing me. You were just carrying a bigger door."
"That isn't fair."
"You sat in that room and watched me hear my whole life read off a page."
"I thought a page from him was kinder than a kitchen from me."
"Kinder to who?"
"To you."
"It wasn't yours to decide."
"No," Kendrick said.
He stood there in his shirtsleeves, soaked through, with his hands open at his sides.
He didn't defend himself again, and that was what undid me.
"Say the rest," I said. "You've been wanting to since the dock."
His jaw worked.
"When you left, I told myself you were twenty-one and I was the help who kissed you in a pantry. I told myself you left because it was an embarrassment."
"Is that what you think of me?"
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