He Missed the Delivery Room. I Married His Enemy Instead. novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: Torn Up

"No," I said.

Cornelia didn't blink.

"You haven't heard the terms."

"I don't need to. I've read your terms before. You wrote them on my operative note."

"That was three years ago, and it was a mistake made under pressure."

"It was a man's life made into a fall." I didn't raise my voice. The chapel did it for me. "You sat down at your computer and erased the bullet. A week before that, somebody walked into his room with a needle."

"I had nothing to do with any needle."

"Then you'll say so to the attorney general. The new board referred your account to her office this morning. I seconded it."

For the first time since I'd known her, Cornelia Whitmarsh looked her age.

"He's a criminal, Brigid."

"So are you," I said. "The difference is that last Friday he stood in front of me."

I put the custody withdrawal in my scrub pocket.

"Davis can have his Saturdays if he earns them," I said. "You can have a lawyer. Niamh already has her name. I wrote it in the box at midnight."

I left her in the front pew with her hands folded.

At the door I stopped.

"Say it right in court," I said. "It's Neeve."

The row house smelled of soda bread when I got home.

Grandda had gone back to Dorchester in a cab with his winnings.

Niamh was asleep upstairs in her crib.

Conall was at the kitchen table in a white T-shirt with the left sleeve cut away for the sling.

In front of him was the contract.

Twelve pages, clipped, the red pen all over it, the corner still stained where the kid had bled on it.

"I heard about the chapel," he said.

"From whom?"

"Your charge nurse. She called me from the parking lot. She said you said no to a hundred and forty million dollars and she's never been so angry at anybody in her life."

"She'll get over it."

"She said she won't."

I sat down across from him.

He pushed the contract across the table with his good hand.

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