He Traded Me for My Sister Twice, But I Planned the Second Time novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Apologize to Hugh

Her father orders a public apology; Imogen refuses and is cut off, and Simon waits on her mother's porch.

Simon put me in a hotel suite under his firm's name and did not ask me one question.

In the morning my phone held eleven missed calls from my father's house.

I went there, because the first life had taught me what happens to a daughter who stays away.

The dining room was set for four.

My father sat at the head of the table with a napkin tucked into his collar.

Cecily stood to hug me the moment I came in.

"I was so worried," she said into my hair. "Leland told us you left in the middle of the night. Are you eating? You look thin."

"I'm fine."

"You're not." She took my coat and hung it on the hook herself. "Sit by me."

I sat across from her, and she poured my coffee before I could reach for the pot.

I told myself it was only kindness.

My father cut his toast in two.

"You humiliated this family in front of two hundred donors."

"I returned a ring."

"You accused a disabled man of faking."

"I filmed him standing up."

"You filmed nothing," my father said. "Leland says the file was empty."

Leland sat at the far end of the table with his hands folded.

He did not look at me.

I turned to Cecily, because I wanted to see her face.

She had her cup halfway to her mouth, and her eyes were wide and wet.

"Dad, please," she said. "Imogen has been under so much pressure. She didn't mean it."

"I meant it."

"She's overwhelmed," Cecily told our father. "Let her think."

She reached across and squeezed my hand.

Her fingers were cold and soft.

My father put down his knife.

"Here is how it will go. On Sunday, Hugh is hosting the donor brunch. You will go to his house, in front of everyone, and apologize to him. You will ask Leland's forgiveness. And you will take back the ring."

"No."

"Imogen."

"I won't apologize to a man who can walk."

The room went quiet.

Leland lifted his head at last.

His eyes found mine, hard and pleading, and I knew he was thinking of the warehouse.

"She doesn't understand what she's saying," Leland said. "Let me talk to her."

"Don't talk for me," I said.

My father stood.

"Then you can leave my house and take nothing with you. Your allowance stops today. The car goes back to the company. I want your keys on this table."

I took my keys out of my bag and set them on the cloth.

I set the car key beside them, and my company card, and the little silver pen my mother had given me.

My father looked at the pen and hesitated.

"That stays with me," I said, and put it back in my pocket.

Cecily had started to cry.

"Dad, you can't send her out like this. Where will she go?"

"She has an apartment."

"It's Leland's apartment," I said. "I already left it."

"Then she should have thought of that," my father said.

Cecily followed me into the hall.

She pressed a folded bill into my hand, five hundred dollars, and kissed my cheek.

"Take it. Please. I'll talk to him tonight."

"You don't have to."

"I want to," she said. "You're my sister."

I got out onto the drive with my bag and the bill, and the doorman looked away.

I looked at the bill in my hand and did not know what I felt.

I did not go back to the hotel.

I took a taxi across the city to the house my mother had left me in her will, the stone house on Alder Street that had stood empty for four years because my father hated it.

The key was in the lockbox where it had always been.

The hallway smelled of dust and old lemons.

My mother's desk stood in the study, with the lamp still on the left corner.

I opened the drawer where she had kept her letters.

On top lay an envelope with my name on it, in her handwriting.

Inside was a single sheet, and a business card clipped to it.

It was the same card Simon had left on the seat of his car.

The sheet said: "Imogen, if the day comes that you have nowhere to go, call this man. He owes me a debt, and he will pay it to you. Don't tell your father."

I read it three times.

Then I looked at the date at the top.

She had written it the week before she died.

In four years of grieving her, I had never once heard her say his name.

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