I Left to Make Him Follow, and He Let Me Go for Three Years novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Annex

Halina's lawyer sent a car.

It was waiting outside the row house at ten the next morning, a black sedan with a driver who did not speak.

I had not answered Ansel's question at breakfast.

He had asked it plainly, over coffee, with the envelope on the table between us.

"Are you leaving Sunday?"

"I don't know," I said, and he nodded as though that were a gift.

The glassworks office was on the second floor, up an iron stair, in a room that smelled of lemon polish and old paper.

Halina sat behind her late husband's desk.

A man in a navy suit stood at the window with a leather folder.

He did not introduce himself, and she did not introduce him.

"Sit down, Neve," she said.

"I'll stand," I said.

"As you like." She nodded to the lawyer, and he laid a single sheet on the blotter and turned it to face me. "This is a settlement."

I read the number.

It was four hundred thousand dollars.

Under it was a clause that I would not contest or claim, or speak of any matter relating to the family, the company, or its dependents.

I read the last word twice.

"Dependents," I said.

"Anyone the family chooses to support," said Halina.

"You mean Magda."

Halina's face did not move.

"I mean anyone."

"She told me you warned her not to speak to me," I said.

"I did not warn her. I gave her advice," said Halina.

"What advice?" I asked.

"That you would not be able to bear it," said Halina. "You are a sentimental girl, Neve. You wanted him to follow you to Scotland."

She let that sit.

"A man with a real sense of duty," she said, "does not follow a woman across an ocean because she is hurt."

It landed exactly where she had aimed it.

I stood with my hands at my sides and felt my face go hot.

"I'm not a girl," I said. "And I'm not for sale."

"Everyone is for sale at some price," said Halina. "I am only finding yours."

"My price is what he owes me," I said. "It isn't in your folder."

"What does he owe you?"

"An explanation," I said.

"He has given you one," said Halina. "He told you, 'It is not what you think.'"

I stared at her.

I had never told her he said that.

She held my eyes with perfect calm.

"The board votes on his seat in November," she said. "If he does not sign what I ask, he will not run this company. You may take that to him with my compliments."

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