Not His Bride Anymore novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Envelope

Nobody in the ballroom made a sound.

Caleb stood there with the microphone shaking in his fist.

I did not look at him.

I looked at the back of the hall.

My mother stood in the open doorway in a navy coat, with one hand on the brass handle.

That afternoon I had sent her one line.

Saturday, nine, the Netherland. Come and hear what you owe him.

She had come.

She had stood there through all of it, the photograph and the tape and the envelope, and she had not left.

"Mom," I said.

My voice came through the speakers, because Caleb had not let go of the microphone.

Heads turned.

She let go of the door and walked down the middle of the ballroom, slow and commanding.

She was fifty-three, and she walked like she owned every floor.

At the foot of the stage she stopped.

"Is it true?" I said.

"Ainsley."

"Is it true, Mom? Say it where everyone can hear."

My mother looked up at me.

Then she looked at Caleb.

For one long moment I thought she would say he was a liar.

"Yes," my mother said.

A woman near the front gasped.

"It's true. I paid him four thousand dollars a month, in cash, for six years."

"Why?"

"Because you were eighteen, and you had stood in my kitchen and bet your whole life on a boy who would not marry you."

"He was going to marry me."

"He was never going to marry you." She turned her head toward Caleb. "He took my money to make sure of it. To wait. To find reasons. To let you lose every little thing until you turned twenty-five."

"You paid him to keep me waiting," I said.

"I paid him to keep you waiting."

"So I'd lose the bet. So I'd have to marry the man you picked."

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