The Heiress Wakes to a Second Chance novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lawn

At the hospital both tox screens match, and at Kellaway House Iris and Odette face the neighbors over Iris's belongings on the lawn before Daphne arrives crying.

By noon Iris had signed every form at the hospital herself.

She let them examine her and photograph the marks on her wrists.

She did not let anyone speak for her, not the nurse, not the detective, and not the lawyer who had appeared in the waiting room with a card from Aunt Sylvia.

"Ms. Kellaway," the lawyer said, "my client only wants you to be comfortable."

"Then your client can leave me alone."

The doctor came back with a clipboard.

"Your blood shows a strong sedative," she said. "Something that should have knocked you flat within an hour."

"Was it in the champagne?" Iris asked.

"It was in something you drank. The detective will want the glass."

The detective, a tired man with a notebook, came in a minute later.

"We tested Mr. Fairweather as well," he said. "Same sedative, higher dose."

Iris looked at him.

"So he was drugged too."

"Or he took it himself and made it look that way. I have to ask."

"He told the whole corridor what he did," Iris said. "Men who take it themselves don't do that."

The detective wrote that down.

He did not say that Dane was innocent, and Iris did not ask him to.

The wrist marks were still there when she looked at them.

The door banged open before she could think about them any longer.

"Move," said a voice from the doorway, and the room obeyed.

A small old woman in a black coat and a white French twist came in leaning on a lacquered cane.

The lawyer stood up.

"Mrs. Kellaway, I'm only here to help."

"I know exactly who you are and exactly whom you work for." Odette Kellaway pointed the cane at the door. "Out."

He went.

Iris's grandmother looked at her for a long moment.

Then she put the cane down against the bed and held out both arms.

"Come here, child."

Iris went, and for the first time that day she cried.

Odette let her, and said nothing, and rubbed her back in slow circles.

"I saw the videos in the car," she said at last. "Seventeen people posted that clip before breakfast. You were magnificent."

"I was a mess."

"You were a mess who dialed the police in front of a crowd. Your grandfather would have wept." Odette wiped Iris's face with her own handkerchief. "We're going home."

"Aunt Sylvia will have locked me out of Kellaway House by now."

"She will have tried." Odette stood and took her cane. "Let's go and see."

It was still raining when the car pulled up to the brick townhouse on Beacon Hill.

Iris's suitcases were on the front lawn.

So were her boxes of books, her winter coats, and the framed photo of her father that she kept on her nightstand.

Two men in matching gray vests were loading the last of her clothes into a moving truck.

A man with a clipboard stood in the downpour, holding an umbrella over the clipboard and not over himself.

"Ms. Kellaway." He sounded relieved. "By instruction of the trustee, the residence is closed to you pending Friday's vote. I'm to give you a list of hotels."

Across the street, neighbors had come out onto their stoops.

Two of them were filming.

Iris stood on the wet pavement in a borrowed hospital sweatshirt, and the anger that had been missing all day finally arrived.

Odette stepped out of the car.

She walked up the path, one slow step at a time, and tapped the clipboard with her cane.

"Young man," she said, loud enough for the whole street. "Whose name is on the deed to this house?"

He checked his papers. "The Kellaway family trust."

"My husband bought this house in 1971, and he put it in my name alone. The trust has never owned a brick." She tapped the clipboard again. "Which means Sylvia Codman has just ordered you to throw an old woman's granddaughter out of an old woman's front door."

The man looked at the street full of phones.

"I would like to take that back," he said.

"I thought so."

The movers carried the boxes back inside without being asked.

One of the neighbors, a man in a raincoat, started to clap.

A second one joined him, and then the whole block.

Odette did not turn around.

"Don't look at them," she told Iris. "Looking makes them think they've earned something."

Iris laughed, wetly, and climbed the steps of the house she had grown up in.

The front hall smelled of lemon polish and old books.

She had barely reached her father's portrait when the doorbell rang.

Odette opened it.

Daphne stood on the step with an overnight bag and a face swollen from crying.

"I called you fifty times," she said, and her voice broke. "Iris, I'm so sorry. I should have stayed with you. Please let me help."

Iris thought of the glass in her hand, the lime floating in it, and Daphne saying it was only club soda.

Then she thought of eight years of Daphne holding her hair, driving through snow, and sleeping on her floor.

She opened her arms.

Daphne clung to her, shaking.

Her phone buzzed against Iris's back, and Daphne reached behind her and switched it off without looking.

"Hm," said Odette, from the doorway.

Iris decided it was only her grandmother's usual opinion of everyone, and she let her friend in.

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