My Holiday Bonus Was a $5 Million IOU! I Quit and Their Company Collapsed novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Constance

"I'm not here to ask you for anything," my mother said.

She hadn't stood up, and I didn't walk closer.

Ansel stopped at my shoulder, and I put a hand on his arm to keep him there.

"Then why are you here?"

"I wanted to see your face when you came in." Her voice was dry and quite steady. "I find I couldn't think of anything else to do."

I waited.

"I have a room on Gorham Street," she said. "Above a dentist. Come tomorrow, if you want to. Come alone, if you can bear it."

She stood, and she was smaller than I remembered.

She walked out through the revolving door with her handbag over her arm, and the doorman held it for her out of habit.

I went the next afternoon.

The room was up a narrow stair, behind a door that smelled of mouthwash.

It held a single bed, a hot plate and one window with a view of the dentist's sign.

On the sill, in a saucer, lay her pearl earrings.

"I sold the car," she said. "The house goes in March."

"I know."

"Sit."

I took the one chair.

She sat on the edge of the bed, upright, with her hands folded, as she had at the island.

"I'm not going to apologize in the voice I'd use for a microphone," she said. "I tried it in the mirror last night, and it was ridiculous."

I almost smiled, and didn't.

"I did what I did because I was afraid," she said. "There was one of you who was dying and one who could save her, and I did the sum in my head in a second, and it came out with you as the cost. I decided you were the one who could afford it."

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