Schemes Come to Naught novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Terms
Ines's POV
My mother made me peel onions before she would say a word to me.
Navarro's kitchen is eleven feet wide.
She stood at the stove with her back to me, stirring the pork.
I sat on an upturned crate by the back door with a bowl of onions on my knees.
Through the swinging door I could hear Dex in the dining room, setting out forks because he had asked for something to do.
"You slept at the lake house," my mother said.
"Yes."
"With him."
"Yes, Mama."
"On purpose?"
"On purpose."
She tasted the sauce, and added salt, and said nothing for so long that I started on a second onion.
"I fed that boy every Sunday for ten years," she said at last. "I washed his shirts when you were sick. I called him my son."
"I know."
"Then he threw you in a closet, and I wanted to take the cleaver to him."
"I know, Mama."
"You waited for him to ask you to stay." She turned around with the spoon in her hand. "For eight months. And you never once said it out loud, in all that time, to him or to me."
My eyes burned, and I blamed the onions.
"I was afraid he'd say no."
"So you made him the one who had to ask." She set the spoon down. "That was fair, mija. Now it isn't."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean he asked." She wiped her hands. "He signed away his title for forty of your people. He signed away his name on that door. The man has asked you every way a man can, without opening his mouth. Now it's your turn to say what you want."
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