My Husband Demanded a Paternity Test over Our Daughter's Red Hair, So I Left Him an Empty House novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Receipts
By Sunday at five, Maple Court had a sound again.
It was a lot of voices at once, and chairs scraping, and a pan lid going down on the stove.
Kate had gotten into the kitchen first, announcing that she would be in charge of garnish and nothing else.
Rory stood at the counter in a clean flannel shirt, filleting trout on a cutting board he had brought from home.
"Is that how you do it?" Daniel asked him.
"That's how I do it. You do it however you like."
Daniel picked up the second knife and tried it, badly.
Rory watched his hands for a moment.
"Little less angle," he said. "There you go."
I stood in the doorway with June on my hip and didn't say anything.
The table was oak and seated four. Daniel had borrowed two folding chairs from the church, and Ben had arrived with two more in the back of his husband's car, and a lemon cake on the passenger seat buckled in.
"I won't have it sliding," Ben had said.
Ben's husband carried the second chair in, and he was shy, and sweet, and tall.
He shook my hand.
"I'm so glad," he said. "He talks about you at dinner."
"He does not."
"He does," Ben said, behind him. "At length."
At five thirty the doorbell rang, and every voice in the house stopped.
Daniel looked at me.
I handed June to Kate and went to the door myself.
Judith stood on the step in the cream cardigan, with her hands folded in front of her and nothing in them.
No casserole. No key.
"It's five thirty," she said. "I'm on time."
"You are."
"Thirty minutes. In the kitchen."
"Come in."
She came in past me and stopped in the hall.
She looked at the oak table and the folding chairs.
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