Too Late to Love Me novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Margot's Offer

Margot Aldridge held my phone between two fingers.

"Delete it," she said to the dean, and dropped it into his hand.

The dean looked at the phone, and then at me, and he did not move.

"I've saved it in three places," I said.

"My cloud, Hattie's phone, and my mother's email."

"She reads it on her break."

Margot's face did nothing at all.

"Of course you have," she said.

"Nine o'clock tomorrow, Miss Ferrier."

"My office on Beacon Street."

"Come alone."

She walked out, and the guard held the door for her.

At nine the next morning, I sat across from her in a leather chair that cost more than my mother's car.

Hattie and Zane were not allowed past the lobby.

The office smelled of cut flowers and cold money.

Margot sat behind a desk the size of a rowboat and slid a check across it with one finger.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," she said.

"A letter of recommendation to the Slade in London."

"A flat in Bloomsbury for the first year."

"In exchange for what?"

"For this."

She laid a single sheet of paper on top of the check.

I read the first line, and then the second.

It said that I had no claim to any painting called Harbor at Four.

It said I would not discuss the Aldridge family, Whitcombe Academy, or the events of Saturday night, ever, to anyone, in any medium.

"It's a very generous offer," Margot said.

"My daughter has a gift."

"Your talent is real, and I'd like to see it flourish somewhere else."

"Your daughter held the knife," I said.

"You said 'Mom says do it right.'"

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