The Phoenix's Rebirth for Revenge novel · Chapter 19 of 32

Chapter 19: Real

April.

A week before Sabine carried up the first cup.

My mother had written down what she'd seen before there was anything to see.

I put the phone face down on the island and didn't sleep.

At ten on Saturday morning I held it out to Gran in her hospital bed.

She looked at the photograph for a long time without her glasses.

"She wrote the ending first," Gran said. "Like a woman planning a seating chart."

She handed the phone back.

Her hand was steady.

Her mouth wasn't.

Ambrose was standing at the window with his back to the parking garage.

He had a folded sheet of paper in his hand, and he'd been turning it over since he walked in.

"Winifred," he said. "Before anything else."

Gran raised her eyebrows.

He unfolded it.

I knew it from across the room.

Two typed pages, stapled, that his lawyer had drawn up the Monday after the party.

Gran held out her hand for it.

He gave it to her without a word.

She found her glasses on the tray table and read the second page, and her eyebrows went up.

"Clause four," she said. "You put my name in a contract I've never seen."

"I wanted your vote," he said. "I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget why I was doing this."

"And now?"

He took the pages back from her.

He tore them in half.

Then in half again, and again, until it wouldn't tear anymore.

He dropped the pieces in the bin by Gran's bed.

"There," he said. "I don't want the meeting. I don't want your vote. You can sell your forty percent to the Navy."

Gran looked at the bin.

"You never had my vote," she said.

"I know. That's the other reason I tore it up." He turned to me. "The first reason is you."

My face went hot.

Gran pressed the button that raised the head of her bed, slowly, so she could see better.

"Go on," she said. "I'm on a heart monitor, not dead."

He ignored her.

He looked at me with that flat patient face, except it wasn't patient anymore.

"I don't want a contract," he said. "I want you to live in my house because you want to. I want to kiss you in front of people because I'd like them to know. And I want to be standing next to you when you finish this. Not in front of you. Next to you."

I couldn't say anything.

"You asked me once why I wasn't marrying your sister," he said.

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