Chapter 17: Yes

Sabine's POV

Four hundred people turned to look at me.

Nobody made a sound.

Tobin stood on the stage with the microphone shaking in his fist.

He was breathing hard, and he was smiling.

He had thought that would finish me.

For six years it would have.

The board chairman leaned over the table.

He was seventy, a heart surgeon himself, and he had hired me.

"Dr. Aldous," he said. "Is that true?"

I had a speech.

I had written it in a notebook in the car, and crossed out every line.

I stood up.

My chair scraped on the stage floor.

"Yes," I said.

The word went through the room without a microphone.

"Yes. It is true."

A woman gasped near the front.

Tobin's smile slid off.

"I need the microphone," I said.

He did not hand it over.

The chairman held out his palm.

"Mr. Ellerbee. Please."

Tobin looked at the guard, then at the room, and for the first time that night nobody was on his side.

He let go.

I walked to the front of the stage and turned to face the people who had hired me, trained under me, and trusted my hands.

My husband stood at the foot of the steps.

He did not look away.

I looked at him for one second.

Then I looked at the room.

"Six years ago I had an operation that left me unable to have children," I said. "I never told my husband."

Somebody at the back whispered, and I kept going.

"I told him I did not want a child. That was a lie, and he rearranged his whole life around it."

My voice shook.

I let it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rules Bend, Just Not for Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.