The Men Who Walked Out novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Her Mother's Study

I borrowed Dad's sedan and drove to Newport alone.

The housekeeper opened the front door before I knocked, and this time she looked at me.

"She's in the study, Miss Daphne. Mr. Wray went into town with the accountants."

"Did she tell you to say that?"

"No." The housekeeper almost smiled. "I thought you'd want to know."

My mother sat behind her desk with the lamp on, though it was only three in the afternoon.

The gauze on her right hand was smaller now, a strip across the palm.

She didn't stand.

"Your father signed," she said. "My lawyer called an hour ago."

"He signed this morning."

"Then he's quicker than I expected."

"You expected him to refuse?"

"I expected him to make me wait," Mom said. "He always did. It was the only way he ever got to be angry at me."

I took the chair across from her without being asked.

"Tell me about Gordon," I said. "From the start. I want to hear it from you and not from the hallway."

She turned her pen over twice on the blotter.

"I was twenty-two. He was the only person I'd ever met who thought I was funny."

"We had one room above a hardware store, and a hot plate, and a plan to start a company with his money and my lab notebooks."

"His money?"

"He had eleven hundred dollars. It was enough for a lease on a garage."

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