They Sold Me for Five Million, So I Collected It Myself novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Sunday Dinner

Haverly House sat at the top of Chestnut Hill behind a brick wall, with four chimneys and a front door painted dark red.

I wore a gray cardigan with a hole at the cuff.

Orrin had said to wear what I liked, so I did.

Dane wore a clean shirt and looked tense.

A housekeeper opened the door, took our coats without a word, and led us down a hall of dark portraits to a dining room with a table for twenty.

There were three places set at one end.

Orrin sat at the head with his cane hooked on the chair.

"Mrs. Haverly," he said.

"Brubaker," I said. "I kept my name."

"Of course you did." The corner of his mouth moved. "Sit. We are having lamb. My cook is under the impression that you are a vegetarian, so there are also potatoes."

"I'm not a vegetarian."

"Then she is mistaken, and I will correct it."

I sat across from Dane.

The tablecloth was white, the silver was heavy, and the room was so quiet that I could hear Dane's knife touching his plate.

I looked at the sideboard.

There were photographs there in silver frames: a woman in a long dress, a ribbon-cutting, a young man in a suit lifting a laughing boy onto his shoulders.

The boy had a gap in his front teeth and sandy hair.

"Is that you?" I asked Dane.

He didn't look up from his plate.

"Yes." Dane said.

"And that's your father?" I asked.

"Yes." he said.

"He died when you were small." I said.

"I was four."

Something shifted at the head of the table.

I noticed that Orrin's hand had closed on the stem of his water glass.

"Mine too," I said. "I was two."

Nobody said anything.

Dane's eyes came up and met mine, and I could not read them at all.

He went pale.

"I know," he said.

"You know?"

"Everyone knows. It was in the paper," he said. "When you got the scholarship."

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