The Secret Between Us novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Garden Club

I tore the notice off the shed door before Norris had finished climbing down the ladder.

"Hey!" he yelled. "That's legal paper!"

"Then you can explain it to me in front of your mother."

I was still wearing yesterday's sweater, and my hair was a mess.

I didn't care.

Caleb had come down the boathouse stair behind me, and I held up one hand without turning.

"Stay out of this one," I said. "I want her to see it's mine."

He stopped on the bottom step.

I felt him there the whole walk up the hill to Harbor Light.

The Pell Harbor Garden Club met in Cornelia's sunroom on the second Tuesday of every month.

Sixteen women in cardigans sat at round tables with tea and chicken salad, and Cornelia sat at the head of them in a cream suit.

I pushed the glass door open so hard it rattled.

The room went silent.

"Isla, dear," Cornelia said pleasantly. "We're in the middle of lunch."

"I'm sorry to interrupt."

I walked between the tables and laid the crumpled notice beside her plate.

"Your stepson nailed this to my father's shed at six o'clock this morning."

Norris came panting through the door behind me.

"Mother, she tore it off the property!"

"I tore it off my father's property," I said. "He's a Wynn Boatworks employee of thirty-one years."

Sixteen cardigans leaned forward.

Cornelia smoothed the paper with two fingers and read it.

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