My Father Gave the King His Youngest Daughter, and My Sister Chose Which One novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Coffeepot
At the Sunday lamb, Ximun names the debt and demands a daughter, her father says Take Amaia, and Amaia takes the king's hat, makes him read the debt aloud and signs her own receipt.
The King of the Owyhee sat at the head of my father's table with his black hat on the tablecloth.
My father was too frightened to take his own chair.
He stood at the sideboard with a carving knife in his hand and the Sunday lamb going cold between us.
I had a coffeepot in mine.
My cousins sat along the table, and my sisters, and the room smelled of garlic and roasted pepper and fear.
"Four million dollars," he said.
He had a low, level voice that never rose, and nobody at the table moved while he used it.
"Eleven years.
"Every outfit south of the river asks me why I let it stand.
"I told them you were family."
He turned the hat a quarter turn on the cloth.
"I'm done telling them that."
My father laughed, a thin laugh with nothing under it.
"Come on," my father said.
"We'll work out a schedule."
"I will forgive every cent," he said, "for one of your daughters, to be my wife.
"You have until the coffee is poured to name her."
Nobody breathed.
My eldest sister, Idoia, was nearly thirty, with a vice-president's title on the company letterhead and a camel coat on the back of her chair.
My middle sister had come in from Spokane on Friday and would be back on her night shift at the hospital by Tuesday.
I was twenty.
I had been pouring coffee all through the lamb because someone has to, and that someone had been me since I was sixteen.
I stood there with the pot and waited for my father to say anything at all.
He did not look at Idoia.
He did not look at my sister from Spokane.
His eyes slid around the room like a man checking his pockets, and they landed on me.
"Take Amaia," he said.
"She's the one who won't be missed."
The room made a sound.
It was not a gasp.
It was thirty people deciding not to hear it.
I looked at Idoia.
She lowered her eyes to her plate and smoothed the napkin across her lap.
She was the only person at that table who did not look shocked.
I noticed it the way I notice a number in the wrong column.
I did not understand it yet.
I understood the rest.
I had kept my father's books for four years.
I had answered his phone and paid his drivers.
I had hidden the late notices under the blotter where my mother's photograph used to stand.
No one had said thank you.
I had not thought anyone would.
The King was watching me.
He had gray eyes and a nose that had been broken once and set badly, and he looked at me with no kindness at all.
I put the coffeepot down on the cloth, carefully, so it would not spill.
Then I crossed the room.
Nobody stopped me.
I stood at his elbow and picked up his hat.
It was heavy felt, still warm from the room, with a sweatband worn dark by years of his forehead.
I held it out to him.
"Take your hat," I said.
He took it.
His fingers closed over the brim, and for a moment mine were still on it too.
"I'll go," I said.
"But not as a gift."
My voice was shaking.
I made it stop.
"Read the debt again.
"Out loud.
"If I'm the price, I want it said in front of everyone what I cost."
Behind me my father said, "Amaia, sit down."
I did not turn around.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he reached into his jacket, took out a folded paper, and opened it on the tablecloth between the lamb and the bread.
"Iriondo Feed and Freight owes the Etxeberria Freight Line four million, one hundred and twelve thousand dollars," he read.
"Principal and interest, as of this Sunday.
"The first note was signed eleven years ago in March, by the owner.
"It has never been reduced."
He stopped.
"Say the rest," I said.
His jaw moved.
"In settlement of the whole of it, the Etxeberria house accepts the youngest daughter of the owner, Amaia Iriondo, as wife."
Someone's chair scraped.
My father made a small wet sound, the sound he made when he lost at cards.
I took a pen out of my apron pocket, because I always have a pen.
I tore the blank margin off the back of the paper and wrote on my knee: Received this day, in full, Amaia Iriondo, in my own hand.
I signed it.
I laid it on the cloth in front of the man they called King.
He reached for it.
His fingers came down on the paper over mine and stayed there, rough and warm and heavy, one beat too long.
I felt it in the back of my knees.
Then he drew the paper out from under my hand and read it.
His mouth did something small at the corner, and it was gone before I could name it.
"Pack a bag, Amaia," said Ximun Etxeberria.
"We leave at dark."
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