His Test Cost Him a Wife, Not a Negotiation novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Envelope

Soren's POV

Dorinda did not let her in.

She stood in the doorway of her sister's apartment in a borrowed robe, with her arm across the frame.

"Whatever's in the envelope, I don't want it," she said.

"It isn't for you, dear," Rosalind said. "It's for him."

Dorinda looked back at me.

I was standing in the middle of the kitchen with one sock on.

"Don't," she said.

"I'll listen," I said. "That's all."

"That's all you do with a Whitstable. You listen, and then you're in it."

"Go see your father. He's been in a wet kitchen since midnight."

She held my eyes for a second longer.

Then she took her coat off the hook and went down the outside stairs without a word, and I knew I had made her angry, and I let it stand.

I put on the other sock.

I thumbed my phone to a voice memo and slid it into my shirt pocket with the red dot facing in.

Then I went out onto the landing and shut the door behind me.

Rosalind had not moved.

Up close she smelled of soap and some flower I couldn't name, and her smile was practiced down to the corners.

"You're not what I expected," she said.

"What did you expect?"

"A boy with a clipboard and a crush."

"I'm thirty."

"You're a fifth-year with a stipend and a cow farm," she said gently. "Let's not insult each other."

She held out the envelope.

I took it and opened the flap with my thumb.

Inside was a cashier's check, made out to me, for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I read the number twice, because my hands had gone strange.

My father had never held that much money at once in his life, and neither had I.

"That is in exchange for what?" I asked.

"For a quiet departure. You request a transfer to your university's other campus. You tell Dorinda it's not working. You sign a letter that says you pursued her improperly, which the dean will be glad to have, and you drive home."

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