I Was the Genius Couple's Forgotten Bride novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: What the Committee Said

"Mr. Frane," my mother said, and her voice carried to the back of the glass atrium without help. "I've got your clause right here."

She lifted the lid of the shoebox.

"Two hundred fifty-two checks," Bea said. "I kept every stub. You can have the lot of them if you want them back."

"Mrs. Colby, this is not the place..."

"You chose the place. You put my daughter on a stage."

Lydia's father stopped with his mouth half open.

My mother walked up the center aisle, past the donors and the deans, and the room made way for her.

She was fifty-six, in her good cardigan, and she had driven a school bus for thirty years.

She stopped at the foot of the steps and held up the box.

"I signed your paper on my porch because I was thirty-five and cold and my husband was dead," she said. "You told me kindness doesn't need a reason."

"I was a fool to believe you. But I didn't go looking for you, Mr. Frane. You came to my door."

"You used my girl for twenty-one years, and you wrote down that she was ordinary."

"She has more sense in her little finger than the whole table you're sitting at."

The committee chair had risen.

She was a small, silver-haired woman, and she had not raised her voice once all night.

"Mr. Frane," she said into the microphone. "Did the institute's review board approve a study of a child and her family on a neighborhood scholarship?"

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