I Wouldn't Take Their Daughter's DUI, So I Healed the Man She Crippled novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Dessert Fork
At Bree's engagement dinner Edgar slides a statement under Wynne's plate to sign away Bree's crash; she refuses in front of forty guests, says she is tired of being their unpaid maid, and is put out at midnight. A rehab coordinator calls with a job, and the patient is the man Bree hit.
Edgar Haldane had already thanked me for the dinner twice, once with a squeeze of my shoulder, when he slid a sheet of paper under my dessert plate.
I had cooked the whole dinner myself, three courses, starting at five that morning.
His wife had put me at the foot of the table for the toast.
"Our girl made every bite tonight," she told everyone.
They had clapped politely, and then they had gone back to their wine.
At the head of the table sat his daughter, in champagne silk, with a new diamond on her hand.
It was her engagement dinner, and I had a chair only because Edgar wanted a smiling audience.
"Read it, sweetheart," he said. "It's nothing."
The family lawyer sat at his elbow with a leather folder open and a pen already uncapped.
The page was typed.
It said that on the night of the third, I, Wynne Haldane, had borrowed the company Range Rover without asking.
It said I had been driving it on Route 9.
I read it twice.
Three weeks ago a drunk driver had hit a truck head-on on Route 9 and kept going.
The news said the man in the truck was an Army colonel who might never walk right again.
I knew whose car it was.
I had been awake at two that morning when Bree came in barefoot, with the bumper hanging off.
By breakfast Edgar had reported that Range Rover stolen.
"It's a misdemeanor," Edgar said now, low and kind, so the guests near me could hear how kind he was.
"Community service. Our lawyer has it all arranged."
"You have no record," Joanne said from across the table. "Bree has a wedding and a future."
"You're family, Wynne," she added. "Family carries each other."
Nobody had called me family when I was scrubbing the guest bathrooms.
I had looked up the law the night the news broke.
Leaving the scene of a crash that crippled a man is a felony, not a misdemeanor.
I looked at Bree.
She was turning her ring and not looking at anyone.
I thought about the study door at the end of the hall, which Edgar shut on the first of every month.
That was when a gold-edged envelope came for him from Fitzhugh & Pryce Trustees.
He always took it in unopened, and nobody ever saw inside.
I had never asked, because in that house a question was just a chore added to your list.
I put down my fork.
"No," I said.
The lawyer's pen stopped.
"Wynne," Edgar said, still smiling for the room. "Let's talk in my study."
"We can talk here." My voice was steadier than my hands. "Bree was driving. I heard her come in. I saw the bumper."
"She's lying," Bree said, too fast. "She's jealous. She's always been jealous."
"I am not signing a felony so you can keep your wedding," I told her.
Then I turned to the table, because the table was who they had brought me out for.
"I'm twenty-five years old," I said. "I have cooked, cleaned and driven for this family since I was a child."
"I have never been paid a dollar," I said. "I'm tired of being your unpaid maid."
Someone's glass clinked down.
Joanne came around the table faster than I knew she could move, and she slapped me across the face.
The sound carried all the way to the kitchen door.
My cheek burned and my eyes watered, and I did not lift my hand to it.
Edgar stood and buttoned his jacket.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize," he said. "Our girl has been under strain. She won't be staying with us."
Nobody at that table said a word for me.
By midnight the guests were gone, and the dishes sat on the counter unwashed for the first time in my life.
Joanne packed one suitcase and set it on the front steps.
Edgar held the door open with two fingers.
"You're nothing without this house," he said. "Think about that out there."
I walked down the long drive in the dark with my one suitcase.
I passed the white fence of the farm where I had mucked stalls since I was nine.
My phone rang before I reached the road.
It was the rehab coordinator from the Army hospital, who had watched me work nights at the clinic for two years.
"Wynne, I know it's midnight," she said. "I need a private therapist for a patient who has thrown out three of them."
"I told his family you're the only one who doesn't flinch," she said. "Where are you right now?"
"At the end of the Haldane drive," I said. "With a suitcase."
"Then stay there. A car is already on its way."
"Who's the patient?"
"Colonel Lorne Strickland," she said. "He was hurt on Route 9, on the third. A drunk driver hit him and kept going."
I stood very still with the Haldane gate open behind me.
The man I had just been told to forget about was the man Bree had nearly killed.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend