Love Reduced to Zero, No Need to Meet Again novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: No Need
They gave me the room at three that afternoon.
It was the long glass boardroom on the fortieth floor of the Ellsworth Capital tower, where I had once sat through three years of Ellsworth Christmas parties.
Six trustees sat down one side of the table.
Frederick sat at the head with his hands folded and his jaw tight.
Eli stood by the window with his arms crossed. I had asked him to stay out of it, and for once he did not look as if he wanted to argue.
My lawyer sat at my elbow with the divorce papers in a blue folder.
Porter came in last.
He had shaved and put on a clean suit. He looked ten years older than he had at the gala.
He did not look at his father.
"Thank you for coming," the oldest trustee said. "Porter has asked to make a statement."
"I have," Porter said.
He did not sit.
He put both hands on the back of a chair and looked straight down the table at me.
"Cora's right," he said. "I want to say it in front of all of you, and I want it written down."
"Porter," Frederick said, warm and low. "We can discuss this at home."
"No, Dad."
The trustee in the middle stopped writing.
"For eleven months I slept with her sister," Porter said. "In her bed. In her car. In her lab, after hours."
"I did it because I needed a child on record before my birthday, and I knew Cora had been told she couldn't have one."
"I planned for Daisy to carry it. I planned for Cora to stay my wife and be grateful to raise it."
"I called it fair, because it let me feel I wasn't a bad man."
He swallowed.
"I was a bad man. I was a coward and a liar."
One of the trustees shut her eyes.
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