They Threw Out the Maid's Daughter, Now She Sits at Their Table novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Brooch
At her mistress's daughter's engagement party Ye-rin is accused of stealing a brooch Da-hee planted, and she refuses to kneel in front of two hundred guests.
The brooch fell out of Ye-rin's apron pocket and rang against the marble, and two hundred guests turned their heads at once.
For one moment nobody spoke.
It was a pearl brooch the size of a plum, set in white gold, and Madam Gu had worn it every anniversary for forty years.
Ye-rin looked down at it.
She had not touched it.
She had felt the weight arrive an hour ago.
Da-hee had leaned past her at the dessert table to straighten a fork, and her hand had slipped into the front of the apron.
Ye-rin had thought it was a napkin.
"Thief," said Madam Gu, very softly.
The garden of the Ryu mansion was strung with lanterns, and the pear tart Ye-rin had spent two days on was still standing on its silver stand beside her.
It was Da-hee's engagement party.
Da-hee stood at the center of a ring of satin and silk, in a pale pink gown, with one hand over her mouth.
She was twenty-five, the same age as Ye-rin, and for twenty-five years she had eaten what Ye-rin's mother cooked.
"I told you something was missing from Mother's room," Da-hee said, shakily. "I said it, didn't I? I didn't want to believe it."
Ye-rin's eyes went across the crowd.
Past the chairman, who stood very still with his hands on his cane.
Past the cluster of men from the foundation, holding their glasses.
To the pergola at the far side of the lawn, where a tall man in a dark suit stood alone beside a lantern.
Ryu Seo-jun, the chairman's ward, had stood at that spot the whole evening.
He had been there when Da-hee's hand went into the apron.
He had been looking straight at it.
His eyes met Ye-rin's across the whole garden, flat and dark.
Then he turned his head and looked at the hedge.
Something went cold in her chest, in the place where she kept the scar.
"Ye-rin."
Her mother's hand closed on her wrist, thin and rough from the kitchen.
Baek Sun-hee had worked in this house for twenty years.
She was already lowering herself to her knees on the marble.
"Say sorry," her mother whispered. "Say it, please. I'll lose the job."
Madam Gu stepped forward, smoothing her gloves.
"I am not unreasonable," she said, in the voice she used for the staff. "Kneel beside your mother and ask Da-hee's forgiveness in front of our guests. Then we'll say no more of it. Your mother stays."
A pleasant murmur rose from the crowd.
It was a kindness, they were saying.
Madam Gu was being so generous.
Ye-rin looked at her mother's bent head, the grey coming in at the part, the shoulders that had carried trays through every party in this garden.
She thought of every time she had stood where her mother was kneeling now, with a plate in her hands and her eyes on the floor.
She was done.
She untied the apron.
It took a moment, because her fingers were not quite steady.
She folded it in half and in half again and laid it on the tart stand, next to the silver knife.
"I didn't take it," she said.
She had not meant to say it loudly.
It carried across the whole lawn anyway.
"I'm not going to say I did."
"Ye-rin!" her mother hissed.
"Da-hee put it in my pocket at the dessert table. She'll know that, and so will you, Madam."
Da-hee's hand dropped from her mouth.
"That is a vile thing to say," Madam Gu said.
Ye-rin bent down and put both hands under her mother's arms.
"Get up, Mother," she said gently. "You don't kneel to anyone tonight."
Her mother came up easily, shaking.
The chairman said, quietly, "Let them go."
It was the only thing he said.
Nobody argued with him.
Ye-rin walked her mother across the lawn between two hundred people.
The silk parted for them, and nobody spoke.
She did not look at the pergola.
At the iron gate her mother stopped and covered her face with both hands.
"We have nowhere," she said. "We have nowhere to go."
"We have a rooftop in Mapo and a bus that comes at eleven," said Ye-rin. "Come on."
A black sedan idled at the curb with its parking lights on.
The rear window was down.
A driver in white gloves got out and walked up to her without a word and put something into her hand.
It was a plastic key card, from the Hanwol Hotel, with a room number written on a slip of paper wound around it.
Room 1904.
On the paper, in a neat dark hand, three more lines.
Nine tomorrow night. Come alone.
I saw.
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