Chapter 13: The Study

I read the card three times.

Annabeth read it over one shoulder and August over the other.

"He wrote that himself," August said. "His hands are bad. He hasn't written anything himself in two years."

"Three hundred gardenias," Annabeth said. "Jules. That's not an order. That's a mortgage."

"It's a test."

"Then pass it. Pass it so hard he cries."

I called the house in Eastover from the counter.

The housekeeper answered and put me on hold, and I heard a cane on a wood floor coming closer.

"Well?" Truman said.

"I'm still doing them."

"Then bring my Sunday flowers to the back door. The study. Come alone." He hung up.

Saturday we did the Duke Mansion.

Forty tables, white and green, and the bride's mother cried into a centerpiece and paid the balance in the parking lot.

Annabeth kissed the check.

On Sunday I cut twelve gardenias and drove to Eastover.

The housekeeper let me in through the kitchen.

The study was at the back of the house, all dark wood and green leather, and every wall was mill.

Black and white photographs in old frames.

Women in long aprons between the spinning frames.

Children sweeping lint off a floor.

A brick smokestack with RADFORD painted down it in white.

Truman sat by the fire in his three-piece suit with the cane across his knees.

"Bring them here."

I put the flowers in his hands.

He smelled them with his eyes closed for a long time.

Then he pointed the cane at one photo, a skinny boy in short pants holding a broom taller than he was.

"That's me. Nine years old. My granddaddy made me sweep the card room every summer so I'd know what the money cost."

"You look furious."

"I was. Sit down, girl."

I sat in the chair across from him.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Betrayed by My Husband, Taken by His Billionaire Uncle from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.