She Heard Nothing novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Review
The dean's office had a long oak table, and Marilyn had taken the seat at the head of it.
She wore a navy dress and pearl studs.
She did not look like a woman who had been walked out of her own dinner.
Across from her sat the dean of students, a trustee in a green blazer, and the registrar with a folder open in front of her.
Lottie and I sat at the foot, side by side, with the tin on the table between us.
"This is a review of two scholarships," the dean said, without much confidence. "Mrs. Pelham has raised concerns about Miss Wrenfield's application."
"I have a few facts," Marilyn said. "I'll keep them short."
She folded her hands.
"Miss Wrenfield chose this university eight months after a woman she believed to be her mother died. She then arranged to share a bunk room with my daughter."
"I didn't arrange..." I began.
"She keeps a bracelet in a tin," Marilyn went on. "She has a note in a handwriting that looks very like mine, and she has told this campus that a hospital record backs it. I have contacted that hospital. It has no such record."
The trustee looked up sharply.
"I have never gone back to that hospital," Marilyn said. "Not once, since the night I had a miscarriage there at twenty-five."
My head came up.
In the tent she had told sixty people the baby was hers.
"You told the parents last Thursday that you held her for an hour," I said.
"I was upset. I said things I did not mean to save my husband from a scene."
"So you lied in the tent."
"I lied in the tent, and I am telling the truth here." She turned to the dean. "A girl with nothing can invent a mother as easily as a bracelet."
Lottie's hand closed around my wrist under the table.
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