My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: Self-Portrait

There was one more thing in the envelope.

A gala invitation, engraved on heavy card, the one I'd ordered from the stationer in September.

Winthrop Trust requests the pleasure of your company. Wednesday, the twenty-third of December. Seven o'clock.

The name on it was written in green.

Mrs. Graydon Winthrop and guest.

Fran read it over my shoulder on the front steps.

"He invited you," she said. "To your own unveiling. With a plus-one."

"He wants a full house."

"I'm gonna be the plus-one. I'm gonna wear sequins."

"Fran."

"Gold sequins, Neve. So he can see me coming."

I didn't sleep that night.

I lay on Fran's pull-out couch with the bar across my back and stared at the ceiling.

At four in the morning I understood that I'd already decided.

I'd decided at the podium in October.

I'd just never said it in words.

I drove to Moonlite at six, while it was still dark.

Hutch was up, sitting on the edge of his bed under the pale rectangle with a coffee.

He looked at my face and set the mug down.

"What?"

"I'm going to pull it myself," I said.

He didn't say anything.

"Before he can. I'll walk up and take the sheet off with my own hands, and I'll tell them who she is. My name. My age. My mother. What the nine thousand bought."

"In front of the board."

"In front of all of them."

He stood up.

He walked to the window and looked down at Milwaukee Avenue, where the first bus was going by with its lights on.

"Say something," I said.

"I'm scared."

I hadn't expected that.

"Three hundred people," he said. "Every one of them looking at you. I can't stand in front of three hundred people."

"I don't want you in front of me."

"I know you don't."

"I want you next to me."

He turned around.

His eyes were wet, and he didn't try to hide it.

"I'll be next to you," he said. "I'll be scared the whole time. I just wanted you to know I'm not brave about it."

"Nobody's brave about it," I said. "Come here."

He came.

He held me so hard my feet came off the floor.

That afternoon I stretched a new canvas.

The same size as the Blue Sheet. I measured it from memory and I was right to the inch.

For a week I painted myself.

Not asleep.

Standing in the party room in Hutch's gray Moonlite T-shirt and my jeans, barefoot, with a brush in one hand.

My hair twisted up with a pencil.

Freckles. The thin line between my eyebrows I've had since my mother got sick.

Looking straight out of the canvas, at whoever was standing there.

Eyes open.

The league came in shifts to watch.

The notary brought coffee.

The purple satin captain said it was "a little intense" and stood in front of it for twenty minutes anyway.

Fran sat on the folding table and did her own nails and didn't say a word, which is how I knew it was good.

On Wednesday I opened the safe under the register.

I took out the sixth photocopy of the wire.

The one Hutch had held up on Thanksgiving night and said he didn't know who it was for.

"I know who it's for," I said.

I put it in a plain envelope with no note.

I wrote Beatrice's name on the front, and the address of the gray stone house on the bluff.

Hutch watched me lick the envelope and didn't argue.

I finished the self-portrait at ten on Saturday night.

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