Chapter 20: Play It

Gordon moved first.

"Willa, sweetheart, put that away," he said, laughing into the microphone. "You're upsetting our friend."

"Turn off her cable," he told the nearest guard.

The guard started up the ramp.

Eli stepped in front of him.

He did not raise a hand.

He just stood there in a borrowed suit, six feet two, and the guard stopped.

Willa pressed play.

Her father's voice filled the atrium, warm and slow, from speakers hung in the glass.

"Willa, sweetheart, it's your father. I'm told you've been visiting that building again."

Two hundred people went quiet at once.

"Years ago I bought that girl off for the price of three months of rent. It was the cheapest thing I ever did for your brother."

Somebody near the stairs said, "Oh my God."

"A Garvey does not run errands for the help."

The message ended.

Gordon was still smiling, but it had gone fixed and gray.

"A private conversation," he said, "taken out of context by a girl who is upset with me."

"I'm his daughter," Willa said into the microphone, shaking. "It's his voice. It's on my phone. It's from Wednesday night."

"Sit down, Willa."

"No."

Claire came up the steps beside her.

She was perfectly steady, in silver, with the recorder held in front of her.

"Mr. Garvey," she said. "I have more."

"Claire, my dear."

"Not your dear."

She pressed the button.

The room heard her father's flat voice and then Gordon's.

Move the Doyle man out Friday morning. Use a medical transport. I want it quiet and I want the girl to have no time to organize.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Left Him by Text, and He Kept Paying for My Father's Care from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.