Chapter 13: Beacon Hill

Eleanor Whitstable set a table for four, and she set it with the good china.

I counted the cups as the housekeeper poured.

My father sat on my left in the only suit he owned, with his hands flat on the cloth.

Pearl sat on my right in her EMT jacket, because she had come off a night shift and refused to change.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Pauley," Eleanor said.

"Mrs. Whitstable," my father said.

That was all he said for a while.

Soren had flown in with us and was sitting in a coffee shop at the bottom of Beacon Street.

Eleanor's lawyer had written to his dean, and I wanted him nowhere near her dining room.

He had said, "I'll be forty steps away," and I had said, "Don't count."

Eleanor stirred her tea without a sound.

"I'll be plain," she said. "You have embarrassed my son and my family in front of the country."

"Your son handed me a check at a dinner table," I said.

"A private matter. You made it public."

"There were forty guests and a woman narrating it into a lobby."

Pearl coughed into her fist, and it was almost a laugh.

Eleanor did not look at her.

She nodded to the lawyer, a thin man at the end of the table who had not touched his cup.

He slid a single page across the cloth to me.

It was short enough to read in one go.

It said that I, Dorinda Pauley, had mischaracterized my engagement to Winslow Whitstable.

It said every payment I made toward the wedding was a voluntary gift.

It said I would make no further statements, about the Whitstables or about anyone connected to them.

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