Downgrade My Ride? I'll Upgrade My Groom! novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Accountability

"Gran," I said. "He hasn't asked."

"He will. He's slow, not stupid." She patted my cheek and let go. "And when he does, you're wearing your mother's dress. It's been waiting long enough."

On Wednesday my father called a press conference on the ground floor of the Atwood & Sons store on State Street.

He didn't call me.

Bailey did.

"He's going to do it," she said on the phone. "I don't know how much of it. Be there at ten."

The store had been closing for a week.

The glass counters were half empty, and the chandeliers were still lit over aisles of marked-down scarves.

The staff stood in a long row by the escalators in their black uniforms.

Some of them had worked there since before I was born.

The old doorman had given me a lollipop every Saturday when I was six.

A dozen reporters stood in front of a little podium with a microphone.

Bailey was at the back by the perfume counter in a plain gray dress.

I stood beside her.

We didn't touch, and we didn't move away.

My father came out from the office behind the escalators.

He looked at the staff first.

Then the cameras.

Then, for a long second, the two of us at the back.

He unfolded a single sheet of paper.

He didn't read from it.

"Atwood & Sons will close at the end of this month," he said. "Every employee will be paid through December. To do that, I'm selling the family house in Lake Forest. It went under contract yesterday."

A murmur went down the row of staff.

"That's the business," my father said. "The rest is personal, and I've let it go unsaid for twenty-five years."

He folded the sheet in half.

"I have two daughters. Olivia, who most of you have known since she was in a stroller. And Bailey, who I kept a secret because it was easier for me." He looked down the store at her. "Her mother worked the counter by that door. I was ashamed of the wrong thing for a very long time."

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