I Fled the Wedding, the Obsessed CEO Lost His Sanity novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: The Chairman's Study
I called the number on the card at nine the next morning, and Clarence answered on the first ring.
"Come to the house," he said. "Bring my grandson. He can wait in the hall."
Harvey drove us there without a word.
He had showered and shaved, and he walked a step behind me up the Lowell house stairs.
In the hall, I pointed at a chair.
He sat in it.
Clarence's study was the room with the crossword.
It had a desk the size of a canoe, a wall of books, and a small framed watercolor of a sailboat hung low beside the window, where only someone sitting down would see it.
Clarence was sitting down.
"You got my invitation," he said.
"You bought the front table at her gallery," I said. "Why?"
"Because I wanted to watch her face."
He tapped the cane on the rug.
"My wife painted," he said. "Sailboats, mostly. Lake Michigan in the morning. She was very good."
I looked at the sailboat by the window.
"My father thought it was a hobby, and so did I. He said a Lowell wife didn't hang her name on things, and I let him say it, and she stopped."
He turned the cane in his hands.
"After the funeral I found forty paintings in the attic. Each one signed on the back with a little sailboat. She had never stopped. She just never showed anyone."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Be loud." He pointed the cane at me. "I've waited thirty years to help somebody be loud for her. You're the first one who came to my table."
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