Chapter 4: Fifty Thousand Dollars

I got in the car.

The heater was on high, and there was a cashmere blanket folded on the seat.

Constance tucked it around my knees herself.

"You're shaking," she said.

"I'm angry."

"You can be both."

She told the driver to take us home.

She didn't say another word until we pulled up at the Thackeray house on Beacon Hill.

A housekeeper opened the door before we reached it.

By the time I got my coat off, there was tea on the table in the front room.

Beside it was a plate of the shortbread I liked.

Constance sat down across from me with her hands folded.

"I moved her out of the Marlow an hour ago," she said.

"Leona?"

"She's in the guest house behind the garden. Two nurses, day and night. Lawrence will not be alone with her again."

"You can't promise that."

"I can promise it in my own house."

I picked up the tea. My hands were still shaking, and some of it spilled into the saucer.

"He lied to me," I said. "He looked at my face and he lied."

"Yes."

"He went to her at two in the morning."

"Yes, he did," Constance said, and sighed.

"My son has always been a fool about that girl. I thought he'd buried it. I thought you were the end of it."

"I was the replacement."

I'd never said it out loud before.

Not once in three years.

Constance didn't flinch, and she didn't tell me I was wrong.

"You were the best thing that ever happened to him," she said. "That's not the same as being a replacement."

"Isn't it?"

"You sat down at that dinner and he looked up from his plate. Do you remember?

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