Chapter 18: The Closing Table

Claire's POV

Thursday at ten, the glass doors of the title company slid open, and Jessa walked in ahead of me.

She wore a navy maternity dress and her own hair down, with no earrings.

Her old coworkers looked up from their desks and stopped typing.

A young woman at the front counter stood so fast that her chair rolled into the file cabinet.

"Jessa," she said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm here for the Kenwick closing."

"It's in the big room. Mrs. Weatherby's already in there."

"I know where it is," Jessa said.

She had sat at that counter for eight years.

Gabe came in last, holding the door for the people behind us.

He had put his father's will in a bank box on Monday.

He had told me so in a voice that meant I should not ask for the number.

The conference room had a long walnut table and a window onto the parking lot.

Diane sat at the head in a navy suit, with Carlton at her elbow.

Across from them was a man of about thirty in a quarter-zip, with his agent beside him and a folder open in front of them.

A woman in reading glasses, the closing officer, was sliding a stack of pages toward Diane's pen.

Diane looked up and saw the three of us in the doorway.

Her pen kept moving for half a second more.

"How lovely," she said. "Family."

"Sweetheart, you don't need to be here," Carlton said to Jessa. "We talked about this."

"We didn't talk about anything," said Jessa.

She walked to the end of the table and put both hands on the back of an empty chair.

"I'd like to say something before anyone signs," she said to the man in the quarter-zip. "I'm sorry. I used to work here, and I owe you the truth."

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