The Video Called Me His Mistress, But I Was His Wife novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Lunch Tin Letter

My mother took a folded sheet of lined paper out of her cardigan pocket.

It had been folded so many times that the creases had gone white.

"Mama, what is that?"

"Your father's handwriting, baby. Read it to them. I can't do it again."

I took it.

The paper was worn soft from handling.

Down the left margin ran the grease stain of a thumb, and I knew that thumb.

I read it standing at the center of the table, with eight board members and Richard Prescott watching me.

"Joan. If you are reading this, you found the tin, and I am sorry for the way you found it."

My voice shook on the first line and then it stopped shaking.

"I never signed the sale. You need to know that first. The shop was in my name alone, and what Richard Prescott put in front of me in that hospital bed was a paper with your signature on it and a space for mine."

Nobody at the table moved.

"I told him no. He sat down in the visitor's chair and said the loans came due on the guarantee, and you had put your name on that guarantee when we mortgaged the house. He said if I did not sign, he would collect from you. The house, the car, your mother's ring."

I stopped and looked at Richard.

He was looking at the candle.

"Go on," my mother said.

"I did not sign. He took the paper away and came back with it done. I do not know whose hand wrote my name on it. It was not mine."

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