Now I Watch Her Love Him novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Thirty Years

Dylan's POV

On the seventh of December my father filled his showroom with two hundred people and a string quartet.

The new trucks had been pushed back against the glass to make room.

There were white tablecloths on the service counters and a champagne tower in front of the Mercedes display.

A banner over the desk read THORSBY MOTORS: THIRTY YEARS.

I stood by the coffee station in my good suit, as my father had ordered, and let people look at me.

It had been a week, and I was getting used to it.

The salesmen nodded and did not speak.

The wives did not even nod.

Hannah came in at seven-fifteen.

She wore a dark green dress I had never seen, with her hair down, and her left hand was bare.

Jonas walked half a step behind her in a charcoal suit that did not quite fit his shoulders.

Every head in the room turned and then turned politely away.

My father crossed the tile with both arms open and hugged her, and then, after a pause, shook Jonas's hand.

"Glad you came," he said gruffly.

"Thank you for having me," Jonas said.

"Any friend of Hannah's."

I watched my wife look across the room at me.

She nodded once.

I nodded back.

It was the longest conversation we'd had in nine days, and it was all I was allowed.

At eight o'clock my father tapped the microphone by the quartet.

"Thirty years," he said. "Forty in the business, thirty on this lot. I want to thank the people who built it."

He thanked the service department.

He thanked the sales team.

He thanked my mother, who had kept the books for the first ten years, and the room went soft.

"And I want to thank my daughter-in-law," he said, and his voice thickened. "Hannah, come up here. Say a word."

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