My Husband Lost My Jealousy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Sunday Dinner

At Hester's table Katja is praised for her restraint, then Hester privately warns her that the old chart is better left in a drawer.

Sunday dinner at Hester's started at six, and she had never once let it start late.

I sat down at her long table with a clean blouse on and the Mercy envelope in the bottom of my bag.

Desmond sat across from me.

He had come home at four in the morning and slept in the guest room, and neither of us had mentioned the road.

"You look rested, Katja," Hester said.

She was cutting her lamb into very small squares.

"I slept well," I said.

"Desmond tells me you were gracious at the restaurant."

I looked up.

"He told you about that?"

"He tells me everything, dear." She smiled at her plate. "It's what a good son does."

Desmond put down his fork.

"Mother."

"I'm only saying she handled it beautifully. Some wives would have made a scene."

She said the last word softly.

I had heard it perhaps a hundred times in three years, and I knew exactly what sat behind it.

A clause in a settlement I signed in a hospital bed.

One scene involving Selene, and the Carrow family trust could stop paying for my mother's care.

"I try not to," I said.

"Good girl."

Desmond was watching me eat.

He did that now.

He watched every bite, every sip of water, every time I laid my knife down.

I had thought he was checking whether I was angry.

I put my napkin on the table and understood that he was checking whether I was still there.

"Did you get home all right last night?" I asked him. "I never heard the door."

His jaw moved.

"You told me you wouldn't."

"I did."

"Katja." He leaned toward me. "About the car. I was out of line."

"It's fine."

"It isn't fine. I told you to get out in the rain."

"You told me to get out," I said. "I did. It's fine."

He stared at me and didn't answer.

Hester coughed into her napkin.

"Desmond, darling, would you fetch the good wine from the cellar? The Bordeaux."

"We have wine."

"The good one."

He got up.

He looked back at me from the doorway, and then he went.

The room was quiet.

Hester folded her napkin in half, then in half again.

"Come and help me with the dessert, Katja."

I followed her into the kitchen.

It was a big white room with a marble island and a window over the garden, and the housekeeper's day off meant there was no one in it.

Hester went to the cabinet and took down two small plates.

She did not turn around.

"The records office at Mercy called me on Thursday," she said. "As a courtesy. I sit on their board, you know."

My stomach went tight.

I kept my face where it was.

"Did they?"

"Someone asked for a copy of an old chart. Yours." She set the plates on the marble. "A very old chart."

"I wanted it for my own files."

"Of course you did."

She turned around and smiled at me, and it was exactly the smile she wore at the Foundation.

"Some papers are better left in a drawer, dear. Desmond doesn't know what was in them. He never needed to, and he never will."

"What was in them?" I said.

My voice came out steadier than I felt.

Hester looked at me a moment too long.

"Nothing that would help anyone," she said. "The settlement is still in force. Every word of it. Your mother is very comfortable at Cedar Row, and I would hate for anything to disturb her."

I looked at her hands on the plates.

They were small and perfectly manicured and completely steady.

For three years I had thought of this woman as the person who had been kind to me when my husband wasn't.

She had stood by my bed.

She had held my hand.

I smiled at her.

"I wouldn't dream of disturbing her," I said.

"I knew you were sensible."

"I always have been."

Desmond came back with the wine and a dusty bottle in his hand.

He stopped in the doorway and looked from his mother's face to mine.

"What did I miss?" he said.

"Nothing, darling," Hester said, and gave him the plates. "Katja was just telling me how much she loves the garden."

I looked out of the window.

It was dark, and there was nothing in the garden to see.

I picked up the cake knife, and my hand did not shake.

That was when I knew my calm had stopped being something Hester gave me.

It was something I was using.

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