Chapter 13: Tea at the Anchor Inn

Declan's POV

I left Davis's study at noon, because Steph asked me to and I had no right to refuse her anything.

The Anchor Inn was four minutes away on foot.

I walked it in two.

My mother had taken the corner suite on the second floor, the one with the bay window over the harbor.

I knocked once and opened the door before she answered.

She sat at a little round table with a pot of tea and the Sunday paper, a day late, folded in quarters.

She did not seem surprised.

"Declan," she said. "You look dreadful. Sit down. I'll ring for another cup."

"Don't."

"Darling, you're making a scene in a hotel."

"I've been to the registry."

She poured her own tea and added one lump of sugar.

She stirred it without a sound against the china.

"I see," she said.

I put the folder on the table between us.

It held the petition with the blank box in the corner, and the three signatures I'd made in Davis's study that morning.

She looked at the folder and did not touch it.

"Say it," I said. "Say you signed my name."

"Declan."

"You stood in an airport with your hand on my face and told me it was handled."

"It was handled."

"It was a forgery! You never filed it. She has been my wife for six years and you let her marry a stranger in a courthouse in Rockland."

My voice had gone up.

Hers hadn't moved at all.

"I did sign it," she said. "Yes. Forty minutes of practice with your old school forms, and I thought it came out rather well."

I had come here expecting a fight over every word.

It had not occurred to me that she would simply tell me.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you were twenty-seven, and sick, and married to a caterer."

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