Her Wedding Dress novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: No Son of Mine

Rhett's POV

Nobody in the atrium made a sound after the slap.

Lydia stood with her hand over her cheek, and a red mark rose under her fingers.

Judith's hand was still in the air.

It was shaking, and I realized I had never in my life seen my mother's hand shake.

"You foolish girl," she said, very quietly. "You've ruined everything."

"You told me," Lydia whispered.

"I told you nothing."

"Judith," said a voice from the front table.

My father had stood up.

He was seventy, thin and gray.

In my whole childhood I had heard him say perhaps forty words at a dinner.

He walked to the stage with a slow step and took the microphone out of Autumn's hand.

She let him.

"I have sat at the back of this family for thirty years," he said. "I'll say a few things now."

"Don't," Judith said.

It was the only time I ever heard a plea in her voice.

"Sit down, Judith."

She sat.

I watched her do it, and my chest tightened.

"This foundation was built by my father to help people who were sick," my father said.

"Tonight it paid for a lie. I am removing my wife as chair, effective now."

He turned to the board table.

"Every gift given in Lydia Vandermeer's name will be refunded."

A scatter of clapping began, and then swelled.

Judith lifted her head.

She looked at me across the stage, and her face was bare and gray and old.

"You did this," she said. "You came home and you did this."

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