In Sickness and in Lies novel · Chapter 17 of 32
Chapter 17: The Price of Silence
Bruce made toast in my mother's kitchen at six in the morning, in yesterday's trousers and nothing else.
I stood in the doorway and watched him look for the butter.
"Third drawer," I said.
"Your mother keeps butter in a drawer?"
"It's a cold drawer. She calls it the butter keeper."
He found it, and he found me looking, and he didn't pretend not to see.
"Good morning," he said.
"Good morning, Dr. MacGlynn."
"Don't."
I laughed.
It felt strange in my chest.
I showed him the photograph of the window and the line under it, and his face went flat.
He photographed my screen with his own phone, then wrote the number down.
"Send it to your litigator," he said. "Not later. Now."
She called me before I'd finished the text.
She was the woman Bruce had named, in her fifties, brisk and unsentimental, who had told me on Sunday that she would sell her car.
"Desmond's lawyer wants a meeting today at two," she said. "He's offering something. Come hear it, say nothing, and don't sign."
Her office was on the fourteenth floor in the West Loop, with a table long enough for twelve.
Desmond sat at one end with his lawyer in the camel coat.
He smiled at me when I came in.
He did not look at Bruce, who stood behind my chair with his hands in his pockets.
"Gwyneth," the camel coat said. "My client wants to resolve this without a public fight. It's in everyone's interest."
"Go on," my litigator said.
He slid a folder across the polished wood.
"The Lake Forest house, deeded to Mrs. Keane outright. One point five million dollars in cash. A nondisclosure agreement covering the marriage, the company and the events at the club. Withdrawal of all claims against the Snyder Family Trust."
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