Second Choice Wife novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Check

I went back for my work clothes at noon.

Joelle drove me in the hatchback with the radio up and a half-eaten doughnut in her lap.

"I'll wait in the car," she said. "If you're not out in ten minutes I'm coming in with the cane."

"Please don't."

"I'll be very polite about it. I'll only hit the furniture."

The Garrison house had a garden behind it, with a stone terrace and a long white table set under the old apple trees.

I heard the voices before I saw them.

Women's voices, light and clear, and the clink of silver.

I should have gone straight upstairs.

I came around the corner of the house instead, in my cardigan and Joelle's old jeans, and every head at the table turned.

There were six of them.

Eleanor sat at the head in a blue silk dress, and the other four were the wives of men on Heath's board.

Bridget sat at her right, in yellow, with her hair braided over one shoulder.

"Naomi," Eleanor said. "How nice. We thought you had gone to your friend's."

"I did. I came back for my things."

"Sit. Have some lemonade."

I knew that tone.

It was the one she used when she'd already decided what was going to happen to a dinner roll.

I sat anyway.

A silver pitcher and a plate of tiny sandwiches sat in front of me, and a long cream envelope that had my name on it in Eleanor's slanting hand.

"What's this?" I said.

"Open it, dear."

I opened it.

It was a check.

It was drawn on a Garrison family account, in Eleanor's signature, for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

My ears rang.

"Fourteen months ago I would have offered you more," Eleanor said pleasantly. "But I'm told you refused all payment, which was clever of you. That is a decent sum for a librarian. You may leave this afternoon, with a car and no fuss, and the family will say you were called away to nurse a sick relative."

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