Forgotten Groom in the Back Alley novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Brodie's Offer

Dot let him in because she wanted to see his face.

She stood at the top of the kitchen stairs in a quilted robe, holding a wooden spatula, and told Brodie to sit.

He sat at the long table where I'd eaten soup, with his coat still buttoned.

Hazel came in from the corridor in a T-shirt and sweatpants, with her hair down for the first time.

She leaned against the doorframe and folded her arms.

"Yvette doesn't know I'm here," Brodie said, to nobody in particular.

"That's brave," Dot said. "Or stupid."

"Probably both."

He took an envelope from inside his coat and pushed it across the table.

I didn't touch it.

"There's a cashier's check inside for fifty thousand dollars," he said. "There's also a paper. You sign it, and you never speak about Yvette and me again, to anyone. You take the money, you find a job somewhere far away, and it's over."

"You came here at midnight for that?"

"I came because I don't want this to go any further."

"Why would I sign?"

"Because it's fifty thousand dollars, Jude. It's more than you've saved in eight years."

I looked at the envelope, and I looked at him.

The pale stripe was gone from his finger, because tonight he wore the plain gold band.

"Garden room," I said.

Brodie stopped moving.

"Eleven signatures," I said. "Hers, then yours. Under them, her mother wrote that you were family."

All the color left his face at once.

Dot tapped her spatula against the table, twice.

"Where did you..."

"Mrs. Shanahan kept the guest book," I said. "And the photograph. You cried through the vows."

For a long time Brodie did not say a word.

He put his face in his hands.

When he lifted it, he looked about ten years older than he had at the head of that conference table.

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