He Sacrificed My Father for His First Love novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Rowhouse

Abby moves into her father's Ridgewood house with Bea and a bat; Domenico comes asking her to stay married until the Foundation's dinner and threatens to call her father's hospice bill a loan, and his mother's black car pulls up outside.

The wind moved across the grass, and nobody else had heard her.

Daphne's gloved fingers were still on my sleeve.

I turned my head to face the twenty-two people at my father's grave.

"Domenico," I said, loud enough for the back row. "Ask her what she just said to me."

He frowned and looked at Daphne.

"Daphne?"

Her eyes filled again.

"I only told her I was sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry, Domenico. Maybe I shouldn't have come."

"Abby," Domenico said, wearily. "You're exhausted."

That was his answer.

I nodded, because it was the answer I had expected.

The priest finished the blessing in a very small voice.

When the workers lowered the casket, I stood at the edge and threw the first handful of earth myself.

Domenico and Daphne were already walking back to the Audi, his arm around her.

Bea waited until the car's taillights were gone.

"I'm going to kill her," she said pleasantly.

"Not today."

"Tomorrow, then. I'll put it in my planner."

I laughed, and then I couldn't stop laughing, and then it wasn't laughing.

She held me up until it passed.

Two of the track crew walked me to my car and wouldn't let me drive.

My father's house in Ridgewood is a narrow brick rowhouse with a green door and a stoop my father had repainted every spring for thirty years.

I hadn't been inside since he went into the hospital.

His flannel hung on the hook by the door, and the kitchen smelled like coffee and the end of an orange.

"His reading glasses are on the table," Bea said, standing very close behind me.

"I know."

"I can take them."

"No," I said. "Leave them."

I sat in his chair in the front room and put the flannel over my shoulders.

Bea went to the hall closet and came back with the aluminum bat he kept for raccoons.

She leaned it against the door.

"Tonight you sleep here," she said. "Tomorrow I'm borrowing the track crew's van, and we're going to Tribeca for everything you own."

"What about Friday?"

"What's Friday?"

"I have a lawyer at nine."

Bea looked at me for a moment.

"Good," she said, and went to put the kettle on.

Domenico came at seven that night.

He knocked three times and waited on the stoop in the same suit.

I opened the door and didn't move out of the doorway.

"Abby. Can I come in?"

"No."

Bea's shoulder appeared behind mine.

He glanced at the bat and visibly decided not to mention it.

"I handled everything with the funeral home," he said. "You didn't have to carry the cost. I know the day was awful. I know what I did."

"You know what you did," I said.

"Listen to me. The Foundation's annual dinner is in four weeks. They're naming me president."

"Congratulations."

"The board wants a married man. Just until the dinner, Abby. Stand next to me that night. After it I'll sign anything you want, and I'll make this right."

He said it softly, with his head tilted.

It was the voice he used on donors.

I looked at the face I had kissed for seven years, and there was a stranger in it.

"No," I said.

"You haven't thought it through."

"I have been thinking it through since a quarter to one."

He tugged his tie.

"The Foundation covered your father's hospice. Forty-one thousand dollars. I haven't said a word about it, and I won't. But the lawyers will call it a loan."

Behind me, Bea made a noise that was nearly a growl.

I stood a little straighter in my father's flannel.

"Send me the bill," I said.

"Abby."

"Put it in writing with your name on the bottom, Domenico. I'll frame it."

For the first time that day, he didn't have a soft answer.

He stared at me with his hand on his tie.

Then a pair of headlights swung across the front of the house.

A long black car pulled up to the curb under the streetlight, and the driver got out to open the back door.

I knew the woman who stepped out of it.

Domenico's mother had never once been to this street.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend