They Chose the Daughter I Found, So I Called In Their Loans novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Two Daughters

Gabriel stood up before I could say anything.

"I'll be at the counter," he said, to the table in general. "Eating terrible pie."

He took the plate with him.

Clary slid into the booth across from me and kept her hands under the table.

For a while neither of us talked.

The waitress set down a mug of cocoa in front of her without being asked.

"You look like you walked here," she said.

"Three buses and a mile," said Clary.

"Cocoa's on the house."

Clary wrapped both hands around the mug, and her fingers were red from the cold.

"I should have said no louder," she said. "At dinner. When he told you to go. I kept thinking that if I stood up it would be a scene, and a scene was the worst thing, and I'd just got there." She took a breath. "I stayed in your chair, and I'm sorry."

"You said it out loud," I said. "In front of thirty people. They didn't listen."

"They don't listen to anything I say. They listen to my face. Mom touches it a lot." She rubbed her cheek. "She cries at me."

"She cries at everybody. It works."

That made her laugh, a short wet laugh, and the chipped tooth showed again.

"Your room," she said. "It's got a canopy bed. And forty-one throw pillows. I counted, because there's nothing else to do in there. The wall by the window has two little holes in it where something used to hang."

"A shelf," I said. "It held my rabbit."

"I figured it was something. They painted over everything else."

I looked at the table.

Then I told her something I hadn't told anyone, because she'd walked three buses to hear it.

"I came to that house when I was three and a half years old, with one shoe," I said. "I didn't talk for five months. Your mother sat outside my door every night and read me a book, all the way through, in a soft voice, without once asking me to answer. She was good at it."

"She was?"

"She was the kindest person I'd ever met." I said it flatly, as a fact. "She lost you, and she lost something in her, and I spent twenty-five years being what was left in the space. Then you came back."

← Chapter 5 · All chapters · Chapter 7 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend