He Made Me Hear Her, So I Took My House Back novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Pen

I walked up the three steps to the stage in my mother's dress, and I could feel a hundred and sixty people watching my back.

Rafael held the pen in his left hand and the microphone in his right.

Somewhere in the last minute he had decided to be the injured party.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my wife is under a great deal of strain," he said. "Her father's death has been very hard on her."

"Rafael," I said.

"I'd like to make this easy." He turned to the room, his voice dropping to something soft. "The note on the Larkin house is real. It is due Monday. I will forgive it tonight, every dollar, if Odette signs the house over to the Fund in front of all of you."

He turned back and held out the pen.

"Sign, Odette. For your father."

There was no sound at all in the ballroom.

I looked at the pen.

It was a heavy black fountain pen with a gold band, and I had given it to him on our first Christmas.

"I'm not going to sign," I said.

"You haven't heard the alternative."

"I don't need to."

I took the microphone out of his hand. He let me, because he thought I would make a speech and cry.

I turned to the room.

"My name is Odette Larkin Cordero," I said. "I worked in the children's room of the Alamo Heights library for six years."

A few heads nodded. A woman near the front touched her eyes.

"I know what a library costs. It costs a roof and shelves and someone who will stay late. It does not cost my mother's house, and it does not cost my father's last night."

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