Secret Billionaire Returns on Christmas novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Christmas Morning

Hazel came home on Christmas morning with a bottle of pills and a scolding.

The doctor had let her go at nine, after I stood at the nurses' station and read the chart with him.

Her lungs sounded clear on the left and wet on the right, and she was ordered to sit down for one week.

She obeyed for barely an hour.

Then she was in her kitchen with an apron over her cardigan.

She pushed a ham into the oven with one hand and swatted Caleb's fingers off the rolls with the other.

"Mom, sit."

"I haven't made Christmas dinner for you in twelve years."

"Then it's a sit-down day," Caleb said, and picked her up and put her in a chair.

She laughed until she coughed, and then she cried.

By two o'clock the table in the dining room was set for five.

Four of us sat down.

The fifth plate at the end belonged to Dale.

Hazel had laid it out without thinking, the way you set a thing you have set for thirty-five years.

Nobody mentioned it, and nobody moved it.

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