I Logged In As The CEO's Mother And Crushed His Favorite Girl novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Herb Soup

Jocelyn can't answer her, Brielle brings a soup the housekeeper says could have killed Holly, and Chase calls it a mistake.

Red text snapped open in the air above her bed.

WARNING. IDENTITY DISCLOSURE WILL TERMINATE YOUR ENTRY.

I kept my face very still.

Holly was looking right at me, at a sixty-year-old woman with silver hair, and saying my name.

She couldn't know.

She was burning up. She was dreaming about home.

I wanted to say yes so badly my throat hurt.

"Hush, sweetheart," I said instead. "It's Mrs. Pembroke. You're in the hospital. You're safe."

Her grip loosened.

Her eyes slid closed again.

"Thought it was Jocelyn," she mumbled. "She'd yell at me for this."

"She would," I said. "She'd yell for an hour."

The corner of her mouth moved.

Then she was asleep.

The red text faded.

I didn't let go of her hand.

Around nine, the door opened quietly.

A woman in her sixties came in with a garment bag over one arm and a thermos under the other.

Gray bun. Sensible shoes. A face like she'd seen everything twice.

The role's file opened in my head. The Pembroke housekeeper. Twenty years with the family.

"I brought you clothes, ma'am," she said. "And tea. The driver told me you were sitting here in wet wool."

I could have hugged her.

"Thank you."

She looked at Holly for a long moment.

"Poor girl," she said. "She's the only one in that house who ever says thank you to me."

I changed in the bathroom.

The slacks fit. The sweater was soft and smelled like cedar.

When I came out, the housekeeper had pulled a second chair to the window and was knitting.

"You don't have to," I said.

"I know, ma'am."

We sat in the dark with the machines beeping.

At eleven, the door opened again.

Brielle came in on soft feet.

She'd changed too. Cream sweater. Hair down. A covered ceramic bowl held in both hands.

She stopped short when she saw me.

Then the smile came.

"Mrs. Pembroke. I didn't think you'd still be here." She lifted the bowl a little. "I felt so terrible. I made her my grandmother's herb soup. It's what we always had when we were sick."

"She's asleep."

"I'll just get a few spoonfuls in her. It really helps." She was already moving toward the bed. "She won't even have to wake up all the way."

She sat on the edge of the mattress and lifted the lid.

Steam came off it, green and bitter.

She slid a hand under Holly's head and tipped it up.

Holly made a small sound and didn't open her eyes.

The spoon touched her lips.

I caught Brielle's wrist.

"Put it down."

"Mrs. Pembroke, it's just soup."

"Then you won't mind if someone smells it."

I didn't look away from her. "Would you come here, please?"

The housekeeper set down her knitting.

She took the bowl out of Brielle's hands without asking and brought it to the window light.

She smelled it once.

Then she stirred it with the spoon and lifted out a few dark shreds of leaf and a slice of something pale and knotted.

Her face changed.

"Ma'am, there's comfrey root in this. And this leaf is foxglove." She put the lid back on very carefully. "My mother grew both. You don't eat either one. With her fever and her heart racing like that, this could have stopped it."

The room went quiet except for the monitor.

Brielle's eyes filled up instantly, perfectly.

"I didn't know. I swear I didn't know. It's my grandmother's recipe. I picked what she always used."

"From where?" I said.

"From the garden. From a shop. I don't remember."

The door opened a third time.

Chase came in with his tie loose and his phone in his hand.

"Brielle texted me you were attacking her." He looked from her wet face to me. "Mom, what is going on?"

"She tried to spoon foxglove into your fiancee."

"What?"

The housekeeper held up the bowl. "Comfrey and foxglove, Mr. Pembroke. Both poisonous."

Brielle went to him and put her face against his chest.

"It was an accident," she sobbed. "I was trying to help. I'm not a doctor, Chase. How would I know what's in some plants?"

Chase put his arm around her.

He actually put his arm around her.

"She's not a doctor, Mom." His voice was tired, like I was the one wearing him out. "She didn't know. She came at midnight to bring soup to a woman who's never been nice to her. That's what she gets?"

"Never been nice to her," I repeated.

"Leave it alone. I'm taking her home."

He took the bowl from the housekeeper.

"I'll get rid of this so nobody else gets hurt."

"Leave the bowl, Chase."

"It's garbage."

"Leave it."

He looked at me for a long second.

Then he set it on the tray table, hard, and steered Brielle toward the door.

She went with him, leaning on him, a hand pressed to her mouth.

At the door she turned her head.

Chase was already in the hall.

She wasn't crying anymore.

She looked at me, and then at Holly asleep in the bed, and her mouth curved up at one side.

She said it so softly the housekeeper didn't hear.

"You can't sit by her bed forever."

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