Chapter 4: Sunday Dinner

I went to the dinner because I wanted a room full of witnesses.

Ivy said that was the dumbest reason she'd ever heard.

Then she drove me to Chestnut Hill herself and parked across the street with the engine running.

"If you're not out in forty-five minutes, I'm coming in with a bedpan," Ivy said.

The Hargreave dining room had a table for twenty and a chandelier older than I was.

Tonight it held five.

Colin's father sat at the head, sixty-three years old, red-faced and silent, cutting his roast beef into very small squares.

Lorna sat at his right.

Colin sat across from me with a fresh haircut, grinning.

Gregory sat at the far end, next to an empty chair.

He had not looked at me once since I walked in.

He had texted on Thursday, as promised.

I had answered with one word, and the word was no.

"Pamela, dear," Lorna said, passing the potatoes. "We were all so sorry about the misunderstanding on Tuesday."

"It was a notice, Lorna. With your son's name on it."

"A clerical error." She took a small sip of wine. "Now. Since we're all family, there's something I think you should see."

She slid a cream envelope across the white tablecloth.

I opened it.

Inside was a printed photograph, grainy, taken from a car.

It showed me in the Mercy General parking garage with my arms around a man in a white coat.

His head was down on my shoulder.

"Everyone at that hospital says you two were very close," Lorna said.

"We were friends," I said. "And you had someone follow me."

"A prudent mother does what she must."

"The man in that picture had just lost a six-year-old patient on the table. I was holding him up in a parking garage."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Swapped My Ex for His Billionaire Uncle from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.