Tell Me Not to Love You novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Four Months Unpaid

The gatehouse kitchen light was on at one in the morning.

My mother sat at the table in her robe with her reading glasses on and a ledger open under her hand.

She did not look surprised to see me.

She looked like someone who had been waiting for this knock since June.

"Sit," she said.

"I'll stand."

"Then stand."

I put the notice of sale on the ledger, face up.

She read the first line and took off her glasses.

"He told you," she said.

"I found it. Mama, when were you last paid?"

She folded the glasses and set them on the table, very carefully.

"The first of June."

I had braced myself, and it still hit.

"Four months."

"Four months and ten days."

She smiled, a small tired smile.

"Mrs. Whitcombe pays when she can."

She counted on her fingers.

"In June she paid half. In July she paid the cook. In August, nothing."

She shrugged.

"In September, a hundred dollars to each of us in an envelope, with a note."

"Each of us."

"Six of us. The cook, the two maids, the gardener, the driver, and me."

I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down hard.

I thought of her plate at Amos's luncheon, three bites and then pushing food around with a fork.

I thought of the empty fruit bowl on our counter, and she said she'd already eaten.

"You've been skipping meals," I said.

"I eat."

"You eat half of what I put out, and then you tell me you ate at the big house."

"I eat enough."

"Mama, I have money."

"I know you do. I know to the dollar." Her voice sharpened. "That is exactly why I said nothing."

"What?"

"That money is your shop. It is five years of you getting up in the dark."

Her jaw set.

"I would sooner starve in this kitchen than see it go into a hole in the ground."

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