Condemned by My Sister novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Eulogy
Corbin's cane stopped tapping.
"Maybe the housekeeper picked up," he said. "Or the cleaner. Anyone could have answered that line."
"We don't have a cleaner," Marianne said.
"Then somebody's lying to you, and it isn't me."
He said it softly.
The lawyer stepped forward and put a hand on his arm.
"Corbin, we're leaving," he said. "Not another word in this room."
Corbin looked at the box on the desk, and then at Dr. Ellerker.
Dr. Ellerker looked back at him and did not look away.
Corbin took his bag from the hall and went out.
Marianne stood with her fingertips on the desk until the front door shut.
Then she turned to Dr. Ellerker.
"Don't go anywhere tonight," she said. "Not home, not to a hotel."
"Why?"
"Because he knows what's in that box."
I followed her to the church on Saturday.
She had picked the one our parents were married in, and there were a hundred chairs, and she had expected twenty people.
Sixty came.
They were neighbors from our old street, two men from the firm, and a woman from the laundromat in a good coat who sat in the last row and cried without stopping.
A photograph of me stood on an easel by the altar, the one from when I was seventeen, laughing at something off to the side.
I had not known Marianne kept it.
Corbin sat in the front pew in a dark suit with his cane across his knees.
He had asked to speak, and she had said yes, because she wanted to see what he would say.
He climbed the three steps to the pulpit slowly, with a pause at the top.
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