She Plans My Promotion, I'm Planning Divorce novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: My Sister

Claire stood up from my bed.

She laid the key on the nightstand, next to the open drawer, and she did it carefully.

"I'm leaving," she said. "I came to put this down, that's all."

I stayed in the doorway and watched her wrists. I did not watch her face.

"One more thing, and then I'll go," she said. "It's about your sister."

I felt sick.

"She called my office a dozen times over the last two years. She sent cards to the penthouse. I told her you'd asked for no contact, and I said it in your name."

"You told my sister I didn't want her."

"Yes."

"She believed you?"

"Why wouldn't she?" Claire said. "You never called her back. I made sure you never knew she'd called."

There was nothing I could say to that.

I stood aside, and she went past me with her head down. At the door she stopped.

"Edith wanted you at Sunday dinner," she said. "My mother is clearing the house, and she has asked Darius to help. I won't ask you to come for me. I'm asking you to come for the chair."

She went down the stairs, and I did not follow.

On Sunday I drove out to Oak Park in a rented car.

The house looked wrong without lemons in the air.

Claire's mother had set the dining room table for six, with Edith's good plates and Edith's silver.

She had not set a place at the head.

The blue chair stood in the corner, pushed against the wall, with a stack of boxes on its cushion.

I took the boxes off before I sat down.

Claire's mother watched me do it and said nothing.

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