Loving Him Was My Punishment novel · Chapter 7 of 24
Chapter 7: The Guild Luncheon
The photograph ran online by noon.
It showed me on the wharf with my wrist in a man's hand and my face turned up toward his.
The headline said: CORRIGAN HEIRESS BACK IN THE ARMS OF THE MAN SHE STALKED.
Celia read it aloud in the kitchen at Pell Street, in the flat voice she used for things she wanted to throw.
"Four thousand shares in an hour. Somebody should be sued."
"They won't be sued," Finbar said. "Marguerite never says anything. She leaves it where a stranger can find it."
My wrist still remembered the heat of that hand, and I resented how clearly.
"Where is she tomorrow?" I asked.
Finbar pulled up the club calendar on his phone.
"The Women's Guild luncheon, one o'clock, the boat club. Forty ladies and the hospice raffle. She chairs it."
"Good," I said. "That's where I'll be."
Celia put down her coffee.
"You'll walk into a room of forty people who've all just read that headline?"
"They've all read what she wants them to read," I said. "They haven't heard me."
"You shook for an hour this morning."
"Then I'll shake in front of them."
She looked at me for a moment and then took the pencil from behind her ear and tucked it into her pocket, which I was beginning to understand meant she was in.
"I'm coming," she said. "I'll wear something with pockets."
The next day the dining room of the boat club smelled of lemon and floor polish.
Forty women in good wool sat at round tables with their napkins in their laps.
Marguerite stood at the head of the room, in cream again, tapping a microphone.
She stopped when she saw me in the doorway.
I walked down the middle of the room with Finbar on one side and Celia on the other, and the whole room turned to watch.
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