No Shelter Left novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Sunday Dinner

The kitchen table in the Larkin house was the same oak table where she had signed.

Aisling sat at the end of it, where she had always sat, and put the little recorder next to her plate.

The red light was on.

Nobody mentioned it.

Marianne had made chicken pot pie.

It sat in the middle of the table, steaming, and no one had picked up a fork.

Colby sat across from her in a pressed shirt, with his jaw set and his phone face down by his glass.

Brodie sat on her right. Kaitlyn sat beside her mother, small and pale in a gray cardigan.

Outside, in a car at the curb, Jude waited with the engine off. She had asked him to.

"Thank you for coming," Marianne said. Her hands shook on the serving spoon. "It's all I wanted."

"I came to say something," Aisling said. "And then I'll go."

"Sweetheart, please eat first."

"No."

Her mother put the spoon down.

"I'll sing Borrowed Rooms at the Awards," Aisling said. "Alone."

She looked around the table.

"I'll say my name when I do it, and I'll say I wrote all of it."

"You'll do the duet," Colby said. "It's announced."

"Kaitlyn announced it."

"The committee announced it."

"I'm not singing with her."

Kaitlyn lifted her head. Her eyes were dry.

"If you stand up there and say that," she said softly, "you know what happens."

"I know."

"Then you know why I need you to say yes."

"I know that too." Aisling held her gaze. "That's why I'm saying no."

Colby's chair scraped back.

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