One Night to Forever novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Matriarch

Margaret Ryerson hears both women, sees that Desmond cannot pick by sight, and sets a contest of Sunday dinners until Christmas Eve.

They didn't throw me out.

Desmond Ryerson held up one hand, and both guards stopped.

"Conference room," he said. "All three of us. Ford, clear the lobby."

The conference room was glass on three sides, with a long walnut table and the whole city behind it.

I stood at one end of the table, Bianca stood at the other, and Desmond stood between us with his hands in his pockets.

"Hum it again," he said to me.

"Desmond," Bianca said. "She obviously heard me do it that night."

"Did you hum it that night?"

"We both did," she said, and she hummed the same three notes, a little flat.

Desmond closed his eyes.

When he opened them he looked tired and puzzled and angry at himself.

"The voice is right in the dark," he said. "I can't tell which one of you it is."

"You could have asked me anything," I said. "I'd have answered."

"She'd have answered too," he said. "That's the problem."

I looked at Bianca.

Nine years of friendship were in that look.

We had shared a dorm room, a bad boyfriend, a flu, and her mother's funeral.

She looked right back at me, calm as a lake.

"I'm sorry, Cass," she said. "I didn't want to do this in front of you."

"Do what?"

"You're confused. You were tired and you'd had champagne."

"I had one glass and I spilled it on him."

Desmond's head turned.

"The champagne was on my shirt," he said slowly.

"That's right," Bianca said at once. "I spilled it, I'm so clumsy."

I felt the floor tilt, because she had it from the call too, from the first minute.

"Ms. Thorsby has the card," Ford said from the doorway.

He had come back in without a sound.

"Her name is on the badge and on the elevator log."

"I know why it's on the log," I said. "It was her badge."

"Which she is still wearing," Ford said.

He was right.

The badge was pinned to Bianca's cream lapel, the one I had left on his nightstand.

Someone had given it back to her already.

"Where did you get that?" I asked her.

"Ford brought it to me Sunday," Bianca said. "Isn't that sweet?"

"I'm not wrong about my own night," I said, and my voice shook.

"Neither of you has to be wrong," said a dry voice from the door.

A small woman in a navy suit stood there with her hands folded over a silver-topped cane.

She had short silver hair, very sharp blue eyes, and a single strand of pearls.

Ford straightened.

"Mrs. Ryerson," he said.

"Margaret," she said. "Mrs. Ryerson was my mother-in-law, and she never liked me."

Desmond rubbed his temples.

"Grandmother. You weren't due until noon."

"I read the news on my phone in the car, and I came early."

She walked around the long table slowly, looking at Bianca first, then at me, then at Desmond.

"Seventy-one years old," she said, "and I've never seen my grandson ask a woman to marry him."

Nobody spoke.

"Now he has asked two," she said, "or one has stolen the question."

"Grandmother," Desmond began.

"Sit down, dear, I'm not finished."

He sat.

I have never seen a man that size sit that fast.

Margaret Ryerson stopped in front of me.

"What do you do, Ms. Rowe?"

"I illustrate children's books."

"Do you want my grandson's money?"

"I want him to know it was me," I said.

"And you?" she said to Bianca.

"I want to be his wife," Bianca said, and she gave a small, brave smile. "I always wanted that, Margaret. You know it."

I stared at her.

Always?

Margaret's eyebrows moved a quarter of an inch.

"I see," she said.

She tapped her cane once on the carpet, and the room went quiet.

"Here is what happens."

"My grandson won't pick a woman by squinting at her in a lobby, and I won't let the board watch him try."

"The Ryerson Christmas Eve ball is in ten weeks. Until then, both of you come to my table every Sunday at six."

"You'll both be asked questions. You'll both be watched."

"Margaret," Bianca said, "I don't think that's necessary."

"I do."

"I'll do it," I said.

Both of them turned to look at me.

"I'll do it," I said again, steadier. "I'm not afraid of a dinner."

Margaret's mouth twitched.

"Good. The woman who is Mrs. Ryerson on Christmas Eve will stand beside my grandson at the ball."

She turned to the door, leaning on her cane.

"And the other?"

She paused with her back to us.

"Whoever is lying will be out of my house by Christmas," she said, "and out of this city if I am angry."

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