I Married the Don for the Debt, and My Husband Walked In Alive novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: Rafe's Mother
Rafe's mother arrived at three in the afternoon in a taxi, with two suitcases and a rosary wound around her wrist.
She was five feet tall in her good shoes.
She wore a black wool coat, a gold cross.
The gray bun of a woman who had buried a husband and two brothers and cried at none of the funerals in front of anyone.
Rafe went down the front steps to carry the bags, and she let him kiss her cheek, and then she pushed him aside.
She looked up the stairs at me.
I was standing on the gallery in my apron, with flour up to my elbows, because I had come straight from the shop.
"Ma," Rafe said. "This is Camille."
His mother looked at me from my head to my boots and back.
"Is this the one," she asked him, in a clear voice that carried across the yard, "who told you to take your hat off?"
Rafe closed his eyes.
"Yes, Ma."
"In a kitchen. In front of forty people. In a house of the dead," she went on.
"Yes."
"Good," she said, and climbed the steps.
She took both my hands in hers, turned them palm up, and looked at the burn on my left wrist.
"Oven?"
"Yes, ma'am. Years ago."
"I don't trust a woman with soft hands." She patted the scar twice. "I'm going to eat your bread tomorrow, and if it's bad I'll tell you."
"Fair," I said.
"Rafe, take my bags. And get that thing off the gate. It's been looking at me since the cab."
At the gate there was a wicker basket with a ribbon.
Rafe lifted the lid.
Inside lay a box of pralines, a jar of fig preserves, a small bottle of anisette, and a card in an upright hand.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Married the Don for the Debt, and My Husband Walked In Alive are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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