The Life I Chose novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Check

I didn't move out of the doorway.

"You can say it from there," I said.

Marjorie looked down at my bare legs and Daniel's shirt.

Her eyebrows went up a quarter of an inch.

"I see," she said. "Well. That was quick."

"Quicker than nineteen weeks."

She let that go past her.

Behind me, the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen.

Daniel swore and flapped a dish towel at the ceiling.

Marjorie leaned a little to see past me.

"And who is that?"

"The one who burned the toast," Daniel called.

The alarm stopped.

He came down the hall in his jeans and his socks with the towel over his shoulder, and stood behind me, not touching me.

Marjorie looked him up and down.

"Mrs. Thackery," he said.

"I don't believe we've met."

"No, ma'am. We haven't."

He didn't offer his hand, and he didn't leave.

She turned back to me and held out the cream envelope.

"I won't keep you. I came to make things right."

I didn't take it.

So she opened it herself and held the check up where I could see it.

Sixty-four thousand dollars.

Her own signature, in her own blue ink, from her personal account.

Then she reached into her coat pocket and held out her other hand.

The ring sat in her glove.

Somebody had cleaned the icing off it.

"Every penny of the wedding," she said. "And this, which is yours, and always was. Holt will sign whatever you like. Kendall will go away for a while. This was always going to be your family, Margo. Nothing has to change except a date."

"Did you find me?" I said.

She tilted her head.

"Holt says you found me. At the charity dinner. He says you came home and said I'd make them look normal."

Marjorie smiled, gently.

"I found a lovely, sensible girl with good manners and no one to take care of her," she said. "I brought her home to my son. Is that a crime now?"

"Depends what you brought her home for."

The smile didn't move.

But something behind her eyes went flat and careful.

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