I Slept With My Enemy, Now He Won't Let Me Go novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Chair

Jude's hands would not stop shaking.

He put them under the table, flat on his knees, and watched Winifred cross the stage.

Two men carried the chair out behind her.

It was an old captain's chair of dark oak, its arms worn pale where forty years of Ashworth chairmen had gripped them.

One leg was shorter than the others and had a folded matchbook under it.

Someone laughed, and the laugh spread.

"That's the bad leg," Winifred said into the microphone. "Don't look at it. It's been bad since the Carter administration."

The hall roared.

Jude felt the tension ease out of Neil beside him.

"You can do this," Jude said, low.

"I know."

"You don't have to say anything long."

"I wasn't going to." Neil's mouth twitched. "I'm nervous, not insane."

Winifred waited for the noise to die.

"I became chairman at forty, when my husband died, and I thought I would hate it," she said. "I didn't. I loved this yard. I still do. And I will tell you the hardest thing I ever learned about it."

She leaned on the cane.

"A good yard is built by the person who can see the whole hull. Not the loudest. Not the one who sells it. The one who sees where the water gets in."

She looked straight at Neil.

"My grandson has seen it all his life. He just never told anyone how much it cost him."

Jude's eyes burned.

"Neil Ashworth," Winifred said. "Come up here."

Neil stood.

His jacket hung open, and he made no move to close it.

He walked between the tables with one hand on the small of his back, and people reached out as he passed, to touch his sleeve, his shoulder, his arm.

The yard foreman wiped his face with his napkin.

On the stage, Winifred took off the heavy brass chain from around her neck and set it over Neil's head.

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