They Gave My Sister the Hotels, So I Stayed to Take Them Back novel · Chapter 21 of 32
Chapter 21: Fallout
Every camera on the terrace swung from Damon to me.
Then, one by one, to the empty gold chair at the front where my mother should have been sitting.
She hadn't come.
Vanessa had the microphone still in her hand, hanging at her side.
She looked at me, and I watched her understand that I wasn't surprised.
"Elise," she said. "What does he mean?"
The reporter from the Galveston paper was three feet away.
"Not here," I said.
"Is it true?"
"Not here, Van."
My sister handed the microphone to the cellist without looking at him.
"Then where?"
"Tomorrow," I said. "The house. Both of us. You ask her yourself."
The house on Broadway smelled like coffee and lilies at ten the next morning.
My mother had the living room curtains drawn against the street.
Two news vans were parked under the live oaks by the gate.
She was sitting on the sofa in a gray dress I'd never seen her wear, with no pearls.
Her lawyer stood at the mantel, the one from the bank.
On the coffee table lay a single typed page and a fountain pen.
Vanessa walked in ahead of me and didn't sit down.
"Mom," she said. "Did you sign Elise's name on that loan?"
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of They Gave My Sister the Hotels, So I Stayed to Take Them Back are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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