Daisy Tucker and Mr. NYC novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The All-Hands

Rhodes showed me the text on Thursday night, in the loft kitchen, with the lights off.

He held the phone out.

"Grandpa is making me marry some farm girl. It's for show. I'll end it when he's well. Don't go near her."

I read it twice.

"I'm a farm girl," I said.

"I know."

"I'd have liked to be called something else."

"I wrote it at two in the morning to keep Simone away from you," he said.

"She was calling, and she would have been at the hospital in twenty minutes."

"I wanted her to think you didn't matter."

"Did it work?"

"Obviously not."

I handed the phone back.

My feelings were a barn full of loose horses, and none of them had a name.

"Don't call me that to anyone but me again," I said.

"I won't."

That was all I said.

I thought it was all there was.

On Friday at nine, the auditorium on thirty-eight held four hundred people and one very large screen.

I had worked all night.

I came straight up in my gray smock, with the cart.

I wasn't going to change into anything that pretended to be a different woman.

Rhoda stood beside me at the back, chewing a mint.

"You sure, kid?"

"No."

"Good. The sure ones are always wrong."

At the front, Simone stood behind the podium in a navy suit.

She looked beautiful and calm.

Rhodes sat in the first row beside a white-haired woman in pearls whom everyone seemed afraid of.

He turned around once and found me.

I lifted my chin.

"Good morning," Simone said into the microphone. "Before the quarterly numbers, a matter of leadership and trust. It has come to my attention that..."

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