Chapter 15: What It Cost

Gavin's POV

My mother set the table for Sunday dinner with the good silver and the white linen.

It had fourteen chairs and eight of us in them.

Two members of the freight company's board sat at her left, because Miriam liked witnesses for her opinions.

Simon sat across from them, saying nothing.

Willa sat beside him, eight months pregnant and glowing, with a hand resting on her belly.

Helen sat at the far end in her gray cardigan and kept her eyes on her plate.

And at the foot of the table, in the chair nobody had offered her in three years, sat my wife.

Cassandra had been out of the hospital for four days.

She sat very straight, with one hand pressed flat under her ribs where the stitches were, and she did not touch her wine glass.

Simon had asked her to come.

I had not known why until I saw her walk through the door, and my mother's face go white.

"Gavin," Miriam said over the soup. "The harbor contract is up on Monday. I trust you have read it."

"I have, Mother."

"Good. You can brief the board after dinner."

"Before dinner," I said. "I have something to say first."

I put down my spoon.

Everyone looked up, and I looked at Cassandra.

She was watching me with no expression at all.

I had hoped for anger. I would have known what to do with anger.

"I owe my wife an apology," I said. "I'd like to make it at this table, because this is where I did most of the wrong."

"Gavin," said Miriam, very quietly.

"For three years, I let you all call her a thief. I called her one myself."

"Because she was," my mother said. "She took a private letter and blackmailed you into marriage."

"She took a letter that was written to her."

The board members went still.

Willa's spoon rang against her bowl.

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