He Traded Our Baby to Save His First Love novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Dinner at Cornelia's

Cornelia's dining room seats fourteen, and that night it seated five.

She had called Carl at noon and told him that the family would settle this properly, at her table, at eight.

Carl had called me and said, "You can say no."

I said, "I'd like to see their faces."

Now I sat on the long side of the table with my coat still on, and Nigel sat opposite with his hands folded.

Emmeline sat at the end beside Cornelia.

She was in cream cashmere with her short blonde hair brushed flat, and she had a bowl of broth in front of her that she was not eating.

Carl took the chair next to mine and pulled it a few inches closer to me than to anyone else.

Cornelia tapped her glass with her spoon.

"We're family," she said. "Geneva, there has been a misunderstanding, and you made a scene at a hospital in front of strangers. I'd like it settled tonight."

"Mother," Nigel said gently.

"I'm being fair."

"I'd like to be fair too," I said. "May I put some papers on your table?"

Cornelia lifted a hand to say, go on.

I laid three sheets on the white cloth, one after the other.

The consent form.

The health care proxy.

A photograph of a chart.

"This is the form my husband signed," I said. "This is the proxy he signed it under, which I signed the day after our wedding, in a lawyer's office, with a witness. This is a line in Emmeline's file that says I agreed to donate on the third of March."

Nobody touched them.

Nigel looked at Cornelia, and Cornelia looked at the chandelier.

"I never agreed to anything," I said. "I wasn't at that hospital in March. And the form is timed four ten."

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