Chapter 21: After the Guests

Poppy blew out eight candles and made a wish she wouldn't tell.

By dusk she was asleep on her grandmother's sofa in the yellow boots.

The guests had gone home with their coats and their opinions.

Rupert was waiting for me on the back terrace, under a string of paper lanterns that nobody had taken down.

At the far end of the garden Willem stood beside a rosebush, pretending to study it.

"Thank you for coming out," Rupert said.

"You have until the lanterns burn down."

"They're electric."

"Then you have longer. Talk."

He had folded the borrowed jacket over the back of a chair.

He stood in his shirtsleeves with his hands open at his sides.

"The lawyer is drawing up the papers tonight," he said. "I give back the house, the title, the cars and the allowance."

"All of it?"

"I won't ask for any of it. I won't take a penny from the trust for Poppy that her grandmother doesn't hand over herself."

"Where will you live?"

"A room in a boarding house on Murfreesboro Road, starting Monday."

"And money?"

"There's a building-supply yard near it. I called from your aunt's kitchen phone last week, in case Lydia was listening to my cell."

He gave a short, embarrassed laugh.

"I told them I had no experience at anything. The man said he had a back for the loading dock, and I could start Monday."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Fiancé's Prenup Erased Me, So I Rewrote My Life from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.