Back With Baby, Ex Regrets Deeply novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: The Powder Room

Alistair read the article twice over my shoulder.

Then he got up and went to stand at the window with his back to me.

"Say it," I said.

"I'm not saying anything."

"You're thinking it so loud I can hear it from here."

"I'm thinking that he stole a two-year-old's cup off a lobby floor and put it in a sandwich bag for a photographer." He turned around. "And that you've asked me to hold your coat."

"I have."

"Then I'm holding it." He picked up his phone. "I'm also telling the hotel he doesn't get past the front door again. That's not a weapon. That's a lock."

"Fine. Locks are fine."

He looked at me.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to get my mother's painting."

The crate in Edinburgh had held twelve canvases.

My mother had painted thirteen of the Public Garden.

The thirteenth was the one she finished in the hospital, propped against a tray table, the swan boats in their winter shed with snow on the roof.

It was the last thing she ever made.

It hadn't been in the crate.

The photo in Laurel's reveal post had shown me where it was.

The front door on Marlborough Street was unlocked again.

There were voices in the dining room, and the clink of forks, and the smell of hollandaise.

Laurel's Sunday brunch.

Six women around my mother's walnut table, mimosas, a tower of tiny pastries.

Laurel was at the head in a white sweater with her phone propped against the butter dish.

The talk stopped when I came in.

"Oh," Laurel said. "Wow. You just walk in now?"

"It's my house in three weeks. I'm practicing."

One of the women laughed, then stopped when Laurel looked at her.

"If this is about the article," Laurel said, "that's Dorian's business. He's a dad who wants to know his son. I think it's actually really brave of him."

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