I Married My Fiancé's Uncle novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: Christmas Night

"Get her a blanket," I said. "And a shoe."

The doorman wrapped Priscilla in his own long green coat.

Bex went to find a shoe and came back with a fuzzy slipper shaped like a reindeer from the kids' department, which I chose not to notice.

I walked down the stairs.

Priscilla was shaking so hard her pearls clicked.

"Nobody gets turned away tonight," I said. "Seventh floor has soup. Ninth floor has beds. You'll be next to a family from Gary."

She opened her mouth.

"Or you can go back out," I said. "It's a free country."

She went up to the seventh floor.

Christmas morning came up white and silent.

The snow had stopped at five. State Street was buried to the window ledges.

Kids were pressed to the inside of my windows, looking out at the drifts, and the reindeer turned their heads to look back at them.

The tea room made pancakes for nine hundred and eighty people.

I found Priscilla at a corner table by the tree, in yesterday's camel coat and one reindeer slipper, with a grandmother from Gary on one side and a sleeping toddler on the other.

She had not slept.

She was watching the man in the watch cap carry a coffee urn across the room.

He saw her.

He set the urn down and walked over.

The tea room was full, and loud, and it got quiet around her table.

"Mrs. Bancroft," he said.

"You," she said. "You have no business..."

"I gave your daughter-in-law everything," he said. "The five Novembers. October ninth."

Her face changed.

"The developer's office," he said, loud enough for the grandmother from Gary. "Your son's car. You paid me double to forget it. I didn't forget it."

"My son had a meeting," Priscilla said.

"He signed a pre-sale on this building," I said. "He told me so himself, and I have it recorded."

Priscilla looked at me.

For a second she looked completely stunned.

Then her chin came up.

"He's my son," she said.

"I know."

"Whatever he's done, the Bancrofts take care of their own." She stood, in her one slipper, and smoothed her coat. "So let me take care of this."

She opened her purse.

She took out the same folded paper she'd put on the old man's desk on Thanksgiving.

My father's mortgage.

"End it, Odessa," she said. "Sign the annulment, and I'll tear this up today. Your father keeps his house. I'll add a hundred thousand dollars for your trouble, and a letter to any store in the country."

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