Tell Me Not to Love You novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Seventy-Nine

Amos Whitcombe turned seventy-nine on a Saturday, and he insisted on a luncheon on the lawn with forty guests and one rule.

"Everyone who matters to me sits at my table," he told us, in the gatehouse kitchen, leaning on his duck-headed cane.

"Amos, the table has the Harringtons," my mother said.

"Then the Harringtons will have a good view of you, Kersti."

"I have work."

"Today the caterers have work. You have a plate."

My mother looked at me over her glasses, and I shrugged.

That was how the housekeeper and her daughter came to sit at the head table of Windward's lawn party, under a white tent.

Colin Harrington sat across from us.

He lent money to half of Lake Forest.

Amos had put me on his right.

My mother sat across from me, in her good navy dress, with her hands folded very small.

Her plate came and she ate three bites of chicken, and then she moved the rest around with her fork.

I noticed that, and I put it in the back of my mind to look at later.

"Seventy-nine," Amos announced to the table at large, holding up his phone to film us.

"I'm told that's old. I'd like it recorded that I'm the youngest person here who isn't lying about his age."

Somebody laughed.

"What are you doing with that phone?" Colin Harrington asked, across the flowers.

"The memoirs, Colin. I've been filming my family for two years. Smile."

Colin Harrington smiled.

He was a big man with a pink, careful face and a voice that never rose.

I would have called him pleasant if I hadn't seen his signature on a check meant to buy me out of the state.

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