Chapter 7: Lake Forest

"Took her check," I said. "What check?"

"I don't know, honey. I never asked. I didn't want to know." My mother let go of my wrist.

"I told myself it wasn't my business."

"It was my wedding."

"I know."

She cried a little then.

I held her hand until she stopped.

I didn't tell her about the master bedroom.

I didn't tell her about the three years.

I kissed her on the forehead and asked her to find me a copy of the loan release.

She came back from the file cabinet with it in a plastic sleeve.

Rosalind's signature was at the bottom. August 14.

I drove north on the Edens with it on the passenger seat.

I didn't go home.

I kept going to Lake Forest.

Rosalind Aldridge lived in a white stone house at the end of a long gravel drive.

I had been there exactly six times in three years.

Every time, she'd met me in the front hall and never asked me to sit.

Her housekeeper let me in.

Rosalind was in the sunroom with a pot of tea and the gala seating chart spread on the table.

She looked up with her pale gray eyes.

"Annabel. You didn't call."

"No."

"Langston tells me you had an episode at a bakery."

"Langston tells you a lot of things."

She set down her pen.

"Sit, if you're going to be rude," she said. "It's tiring to look up at you."

I didn't sit.

I put the loan release on top of her seating chart.

She glanced at it, and then back at me.

"Your father paid on time. Good for him."

"Langston told me last night that you'd call it in if I left before Saturday."

Something flickered across her face and was gone.

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