He Hid His Secret Wife So I Stole His Sister's Boyfriend novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Table for Eight

Margo seats Willa by the kitchen door at the Winfield dinner, Jerome moves her chair, and Willa tells the old man she carries his son's baby, then asks where his son was on Tuesday.

Dot sent Jerome's recording of Tate's threat to her three inboxes before breakfast.

Then she printed a copy and put it in her good flour tin.

Margo's text came at nine the next morning.

"Thursday, seven, my father's house. Bring Jerome. Come and see how a family settles things."

I showed it to Dot.

"She wants you where she can see you," said Dot. "And where her father can see you fail."

"I'm going."

"I know," said Dot, and went to her closet.

She came back with a green silk dress in a dry-cleaning bag.

"My sister wore it to her last party. It will fit over a baby."

It did.

Jerome picked me up on Thursday in a dark sedan, and he looked at me for a long moment before he started the engine.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said. "You look like you're about to win something."

The Winfield house sat behind a stone wall at the end of a drive lined with trees.

A woman in a black uniform opened the door.

Margo was waiting in the hall in a navy dress, with her hand already out for Jerome's arm.

"You came," she said to him, softly. "I thought you might have thought better of it."

"I came with Willa," he said.

Margo's hand dropped.

She smiled at me and the smile did not move her eyes. "Of course. Come in, dear."

The dining room had a table for eight and a crystal chandelier.

A white card sat at every place.

Mine said Jerome's Guest, and it lay at the far end, beside the swinging door to the kitchen, on a paper napkin.

Everyone else had linen.

Tate stood by the fireplace in a charcoal suit with a glass of scotch.

He didn't look at me.

Their father sat at the head of the table, a heavy white-haired man of sixty-five with a hand on the cane across his knees.

"This is the girl?" he said to Margo, without looking at me.

"This is Jerome's friend, Father. Willa."

"What do you do, Miss Fenn?"

"I transcribe," I said. "Court hearings, interviews, medical dictation. I type what people say."

"A secretary."

"A witness," said Dot's voice in my head, so I smiled instead of saying it.

Jerome pulled out my chair and moved it away from the kitchen door.

Then he took the card that said Jerome's Guest, laid it on the sideboard, and sat down beside me, at the table's center.

Margo said, "Jerome. Your seat is by me."

"It's by her," Jerome said.

Nobody spoke.

Two men from the company board and one of their wives were looking at their plates.

Soup came.

I ate three spoonfuls, and then I put my spoon down.

"I'm eighteen weeks pregnant," I said. "The baby is your son's."

The old man's spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.

Tate laughed.

It was good, a short, surprised bark.

"Father, I have never seen this woman before in my life."

"You've seen her every Tuesday and Thursday night for eleven months," I said. "You told me you were single and your family kept you on a leash."

"She's confused," Margo said smoothly. "She was at the hospital Tuesday making a scene, and I handled it. I'm sorry, Father. I should have kept her away from this house."

"I'm not confused."

"Miss Fenn," the old man said. His voice was very quiet. "My son is a Winfield. Girls like you have been telling lies about us since before he was out of school. Get out."

Nobody moved to take my arm.

Jerome's hand came to rest, light and warm, on the small of my back.

I felt Margo see it.

Her eyes went to his fingers and stayed there.

"I won't make a scene," I said. "I'll leave. Before I go, I have one question."

I turned to Tate.

"You told me you couldn't introduce me because your father would cut you off. You said he'd disinherit you for dating a nobody."

Tate's glass stopped halfway to his mouth.

"I never said that."

"You said it on my couch, with your shoes off," I said.

The old man looked at his son.

For a second I saw something in Tate's face that I had only seen once, in the VIP wing.

He was afraid.

"Father, she's lying."

"Then where were you Tuesday morning?" I asked him. "At ten o'clock?"

Tate said, too fast, "A client."

"A client," his father repeated.

I took my phone out of my purse and laid it face-down beside my soup.

"Ask your son," I said, "what's in Room 401 at St. Brendan's."

The wine glass in Margo's hand broke.

She hadn't squeezed it.

She had simply stopped holding it.

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