Over Before She Loved Me novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Nobody Handed Me a Door
Joelle went to Dolores's house on Sunday, because she would not spend the rest of her pregnancy afraid of one front door.
The doctor had cleared her for short trips.
Maureen had packed a thermos and told her to sit down every chance she got.
Dustin drove, and said nothing the whole way, as he had promised.
The housekeeper opened the door of the big stone house in Sewickley and stared at the three of them.
"Mrs. Rayburn isn't receiving."
"She'll receive me," Joelle said.
The housekeeper looked at Dustin.
He gave a small shrug that meant he had no say.
She stepped back.
Dolores sat in the library with a glass of water and a photograph in her lap.
She wore a plain gray cardigan, no pearls and no lipstick, and she looked ten years older than she had in the courtroom.
"I wondered whether you'd come," she said.
"You said nobody handed you a door." Joelle sat down in the armchair across from her without being asked. "I want to know what you meant."
Dolores stared at the photograph.
"My father owned a lumber yard in Altoona. In nineteen ninety he lost it to a man who sold him bad loans."
Dustin leaned against the doorway.
"I was twenty-two. Dustin's grandfather came to the house with a lawyer. He said he'd settle every debt my father had, and the bank would stop. In return I would marry his son."
Joelle sat very still.
"My husband didn't want me either," Dolores said. "He was thirty-one. He loved a woman in Erie who sold insurance. He gave her up because his father told him to, and he spent twenty-six years being polite to me."
"Mother," Dustin said.
"Don't. I'm telling it once." Her voice did not shake. "I never saw the contract. There wasn't one. There was a handshake in my father's kitchen, and I was passed over it like a dish."
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