Seducing My Dad's Best Friend novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Toast
The yard shed held eighty people and smelled of fried perch and wet wool.
Long tables ran down the middle under strings of lights, and a banner over the stage said HAPPY RETIREMENT STAN in glitter letters.
My father sat at the head table in his good jacket with a plate he had not touched.
Gabe sat on his right.
I sat on my father's left, and under the tablecloth I held Gabe's hand across my father's lap, which my father pretended not to notice.
Devon sat across from us in a black dress with her ring on.
She had not looked at me once since the soup.
When the plates were cleared she stood and tapped a fork on her glass.
"Friends," she said, and the room went quiet. "I've worked at this yard four years, and Stan Pawlak is the kindest man I have ever known."
People clapped.
"And because I love this family," she said, "I think we owe him the truth tonight."
My father put his fork down.
Gabe's hand went rigid in mine.
I squeezed it once.
Devon picked up a folded paper from beside her plate and held it high.
"Fourteen years ago in February, Carol Pawlak died on the lake road. We were all told it was ice and a stranger's truck. It wasn't."
She waited for the room to gasp.
"The driver was Gabriel Stoltz," she said. "Stan's partner. The man who is about to be handed half of this yard. This is the sheriff's report. Stan has kept it in his safe for fourteen years."
She read it out, line by line, in a clear carrying voice.
She read the road and the mile marker and my mother's name.
She read: Driver: Stoltz, Gabriel J., age 28.
Then she lowered the paper.
Nobody gasped.
Nobody moved.
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