He Auctioned Our Week to My Best Friend, So I Took the Helm novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Kitchen Table

Tobias and Brynn greet her next morning with pastries and a surprise-gift lie; Samantha takes her father's boat papers and leaves, and Tobias says she is acting as if he sold her.

I slept in the guest room with the door locked, and Tobias let me.

He came home at two in the morning, tried the handle once, and went down the hall.

At seven I smelled coffee and heard a woman laughing in my kitchen.

I put on yesterday's cardigan and went down.

Brynn sat on a stool at the island with a pastry box open in front of her and her shoes off.

Tobias stood at the stove in his shirtsleeves, making eggs.

They both looked up and smiled at the same moment.

"There she is," Brynn said. "Sam, sit. I brought the almond ones."

"Why are you in my house?"

"Because I couldn't sleep," she said. "I felt sick about last night. So I came to fix it."

Tobias put a plate in front of me.

"It was supposed to be a surprise," he said. "That's all it was."

"What was?"

"The lot." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I put the week up so the room would bid on it. Brynn was going to win it and hand it to you. A big gift, in front of everyone, for the anniversary."

"We'd have all gone together," Brynn said. "You, me, him. Like old times."

I looked at the eggs.

They were soft and yellow and I could not eat them.

"A man at table three was bidding," I said. "Brynn, you went to twenty-five thousand in one jump. Did you plan that too?"

"I panicked," she said, and laughed. "I wanted to be sure nobody else got it."

"Who paid?"

She glanced at Tobias.

"Joint account," he said. "It's the same money, Sam. It goes to the babies either way."

"The airline reminder said two travelers. Kemper and Stanwood."

"It's a glitch."

"It said booked August twenty-third."

"Samantha." He put the spatula down. "You're building a case out of a text on my phone."

Brynn slid off her stool and came around the island.

"Honey. Look at me."

She took both my hands.

Her hands were warm and a little dry, from all the sanitizer at work, and I had held them at my mother's funeral.

"I'd never do anything to hurt you," she said. "You know that. I'd cut off my arm first."

I did know that, or I always had.

For thirteen years she had been the first call I made.

My throat closed.

Then I thought about the test in my clutch upstairs, with its two pink lines.

I could have said it right there, in front of both of them.

I didn't want to hand it to two people who were smiling at me like that.

"I need to get something from my father's desk," I said.

Tobias frowned. "What for?"

"The boat papers."

Nobody said anything.

I went into the study and opened the bottom drawer.

The registration was in a blue folder with my father's handwriting on the tab: Marigold.

Under it lay his old brass key ring, with the key to the cabin and the key to the boat shed in Rockport.

I put both in my tote with my laptop, a sweater, and two weeks of underwear.

Tobias leaned in the doorway.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"My sister's."

"For one auction?"

"For the part where you told a ballroom to trust you and booked a flight for two."

"Joanna doesn't even like me," he said.

"Joanna has a couch."

He laughed once, short.

"You'll be back by dinner."

I walked past him into the hall.

Brynn was waiting by the front door, holding my coat and my keys.

She had thought of both before I did.

"Here," she said, and she hugged me again, hard, with her cheek against my hair.

"Call me when you're ready. I'll bring soup. I've got you, Sam, I always have."

She stepped back and tilted her head, the way she did when she was checking on me.

"Did you take your pills this morning?"

I thought of the little white bottle in my bag, the one from the new doctor.

I hadn't gotten them from her, and she hadn't asked me where they came from.

"Yes," I said.

"Good girl."

I went out onto the porch.

Behind me, Tobias spoke in a flat, reasonable voice that carried across the yard.

"It's seven days, Samantha. You're acting like I sold you."

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