After the Divorce, I Became His First Love's Sister-in-Law novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: What I Heard

The ballroom erupted before the old nurse had finished sitting down.

Phones rose in every hand, and three hundred people started talking at once.

Delphine got to her feet in the front row and said, loudly, "This is absurd. She is a stranger."

Nobody answered her.

Etienne's grandmother turned her head very slowly and looked at her granddaughter for a long moment.

Then Delphine ran.

She went through the stage door with her gown gathered in both fists, and Colin went after her.

I went after him.

I did not decide to.

My legs carried me past the piano, past the dean, past Etienne's outstretched hand, and into the dark wings behind the curtain.

I stopped behind a stack of stage flats where they could not see me.

Delphine had her back against a brick wall, and Colin stood two steps from her with his chest heaving.

"Tell me she's lying," he said.

"Colin, darling, listen..."

"Tell me you played it."

She opened her mouth and I watched her choose a lie.

I watched her choose it, quickly and well.

"You were so ill," she said softly. "I only wanted you to have something to hold..."

"Did you play that piece for me? Yes or no?"

The warmth went out of her face.

I had never seen it go.

It went all at once, and what was left was a stranger with Delphine's cheekbones.

"No," she said.

Colin made a sound I did not know he could make.

"I hated that ward," Delphine said. "It smelled like a drain. I came for twenty minutes every afternoon because your mother made me, and I counted the minutes."

"The piano..."

"I never touched it. I told you I had because you cried when you said you wanted to know who it was." She laughed, short and ugly. "You were the heir to Rutherford Group. You wanted a saint. I gave you one."

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