They Called Me Barren, I Married a Billionaire novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Barren Is a Word for Fields

Elias's grandmother questions Leona in her hospital suite and asks for a wedding by Friday; alone with her, she whispers that Elias had himself fixed at twenty-nine and Leona should ask him why.

Elias's grandmother lived in a private suite on the ninth floor of Northwestern, with a window, a recliner and a tray of cold soup she was ignoring.

She was tiny and white-haired, with an oxygen tube under her nose and very sharp eyes.

"Closer," she said. "I don't see well at a distance, and I want to see the face that did that to Cordelia Stockbridge."

I walked to the side of the bed in the navy dress Imogen had found for me.

She looked me over from my hair to my shoes and back.

"Short hair," she said. "Good. It shows you have a neck."

"Nana," Elias said from the doorway.

"Stop hovering. Go get me some ginger ale and don't come back for ten minutes."

"The nurse said no ginger ale."

"Then find a nurse who says yes."

He looked at me.

I nodded, and he left, which I would not have thought a man like him could do.

She waited until the door clicked shut.

"Sit," she said.

I sat in the recliner.

"Are you barren?"

My chest went tight.

"Yes," I said. "That's what they told me."

"Who told you?"

"My mother-in-law. And a specialist."

"What did the specialist say?"

Nobody had asked me that in six years.

They had only told me what he said.

"That my chance of conceiving on my own is under three percent. That it's low reserve. The two treatments didn't take."

"Under three percent isn't zero."

"It's close enough that I stopped counting."

"No, you didn't," she said. "You're counting right now."

I looked at my hands.

She was right.

"Barren is a word for fields, dear," she said. "Nobody stands up at a party and calls a woman a field. Cordelia chose that word because it's the only one that makes you smaller."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

I wiped my face with the back of my wrist.

"I'm sorry. I don't normally cry in front of people I met four minutes ago."

"I've buried a husband, a daughter and two dogs. Cry all you want."

She pointed at the box of tissues on the table, and I took three.

"Now the important question. Do you love my grandson?"

"I met him last night."

"That's not what I asked."

"Then no," I said. "But I like how he stands when someone's being cruel. He doesn't pretend not to see it."

She studied me for a long moment.

"Elias has been alone in that apartment for ten years with a cat that hates people," she said. "He told me it was a choice."

"Is it?"

"It's something he told himself so often it learned to talk."

The door opened and Elias came in holding a can of ginger ale.

"Two minutes, I got it from a vending machine," he said. "Don't tell the nurse."

"Give it here."

She popped it with a hiss and drank, and her eyes closed for a moment.

Then she opened them and looked at both of us, me in the recliner and Elias standing beside it with his hand on the back.

"I'd like to see you married by Friday," she said. "Here. In this room. I have a pastor, a friend, and perhaps two more weeks of good days."

"Nana," Elias said. "Don't."

"I'm not asking for a miracle. I'm asking for a ring."

The room went quiet except for the oxygen.

I looked at Elias, and he looked at me.

"Friday works," I said.

Her whole face changed.

She reached out and took my hand with fingers as light as paper, and she held it a second too long.

"Elias, go find Imogen and get a pen," she said. "The girl and I need five minutes."

"Nana, I'm not leaving you alone with her. You'll interrogate her again."

"I'll do worse. Go."

He went, and he looked back over his shoulder twice.

The moment the door closed, her grip tightened.

"I'll tell you one thing," she said, low and quick. "Only one, because it's his to tell and he won't."

"Okay."

"He told you he's had himself fixed. When he was twenty-nine."

"Yes. He said so on the terrace."

"He says it like a business decision." Her eyes were bright and wet and fierce. "It wasn't. Ask him why. And don't let him tell you it's a clause."

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