He Called My Inheritance a Forgery in Front of Three Hundred Guests, Then Took Every Blow Meant for Me novel · Chapter 20 of 40

Chapter 20: Godmother

I stared at the photo until the screen went dark.

Then I woke it up and stared again.

Rosemary's pearl earrings.

Rosemary's camel coat.

Rosemary's small neat hand on the top of the car door, the hand that had squeezed mine at the board table.

"Kendrick."

He was awake at once, the way he always seemed to be.

I held the phone out.

He sat up and looked at it for a long time.

He didn't look surprised.

He looked tired, as though he'd been hoping for years not to be right.

"July ninth," he said quietly. "She stood at his elbow."

"She held me at my christening."

"I know."

"She voted to suspend you. She sighed and said it was for your own protection."

"I know."

"You knew."

"I wondered," Kendrick said. "Since the banker got that photo. She's the one who told the board he should look into me in the first place. Back in September. Very kindly."

I put the phone face down on the blanket.

My chest felt like someone was standing on it.

"I want to be sure," I said.

"So do I."

"Then we test her."

He looked at me.

"Something only she hears," I said. "If Leonard shows up for it, it's her."

We flew home on the fourth.

Harrow Hill was brown and bare after Florida.

The leaves were down.

The Glasshouse was being cleaned for a wedding, men on ladders with buckets.

We told no one.

Not the banquet captain.

Not even Chloe.

On Sunday afternoon I drove to Rosemary's house in Stockbridge.

It's a white clapboard house on a side street, with a green door and roses cut back for winter.

I'd had Sunday lunch there a hundred times as a girl.

She opened the door before I knocked.

"Darling," she said, and held out her arms.

I let her hug me.

She smelled like rose lotion, the way she always had.

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