They Threw Us in the Snow. I Owned Everything. novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Red Dress in the Doorway

Laurel's POV

The director with the red tie called me on Monday afternoon.

"Margaret is giving a dinner for the senior staff tonight at the house," he said. "She wants to show the bank everything is calm. I'd like Pinegate's owner at the table."

"She won't want me there."

"She can't refuse the woman who holds her mortgage."

I put on the black dress and left Joy with the sitter, and Tobias drove me to the end of the drive and waited in the truck with the engine off.

We had not talked about the page with his signature since he told me last night.

He had told me every word of it, with nothing taken out, and I had listened to all of it.

The housekeeper took my coat at the door.

The dining room was the one I had cooked in for eight years, with the same long table and the same candles.

Forty people stood around it with glasses, directors and bankers and their wives.

Margaret saw me over their heads, and for one moment her face did not hold.

Then she smiled and tapped her glass with a spoon.

"Friends," she said. "Before dinner I have news that should settle any nerves."

She put her hand on Colin's sleeve.

He stood beside a pretty woman in a cream suit, a banker's daughter, with her hand tucked into his arm.

"My son is engaged," Margaret said. "Thayer Holdings will have a family again."

Colin did not look at me.

He looked at the carpet, and the woman beside him lifted her chin and smiled at the room.

Nobody clapped quite yet.

A door banged in the front hall.

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