Chapter 22: Who Gets The Gate

Kerensa's POV

On Sunday evening I set the long dining room table for eleven.

The cook had been cooking since Friday.

At nine the next morning the board would sell Thaxton Group, and my lawyers were still working out how to get there first.

I had decided the dinner would happen anyway.

There was a turkey, and cornbread, and green beans with almonds, and three pies on the sideboard.

Every member of the staff had a chair.

I had put a place card at each one, with a first name in my own handwriting.

The cook's was at the head, and mine was in the middle.

Torsten sat on my left, with his arm out of its sling.

My aunt sat on my right, in a navy dress she'd bought for the funeral of a friend.

She looked up at the ceiling, at the chandelier, and at the gilt frames on the walls.

"That's a lot of house," she said.

"It's too much house."

"I know."

"I'd have you at my kitchen table with a plate on your knee," she said.

"But this is nice, too. Don't let anyone tell you it isn't."

I laughed and put my hand over hers.

The housekeeper had just put the gravy boat down when the house phone rang.

The guard at the gate said, in a careful voice, "Ma'am, it's your mother and your father."

I stood up.

"They said you told them to come," he said.

"I told her to come," I said.

"I said Sunday. I didn't say him."

"Do I let them in?"

"Don't touch the gate," I said.

"I'm coming down."

Torsten got up with me.

"Let me do the talking," I said.

"Always," he said.

We walked down the drive in the dark, side by side.

At the gate a taxi idled with its lights on.

My mother stood on the far side of the bars in a black coat, with bandaged feet in flat shoes.

My father stood a step behind her with a thick stack of envelopes in his hand.

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