They Called Me Selfish. My Kidney Saved Her Life. novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: No Price

My mother had set the table with the blue plates again.

She had made the pot roast, and nobody touched it.

My father sat at the head with the manila folder beside his fork.

Cora sat across from me in white, and Reed sat next to her with his eyes on the tablecloth.

"Let's be adults," my father said. "I'll go first. There is a second loan on this house."

My mother set down her glass.

"What second loan, Hugh?"

"Fifty-two thousand. A line of credit. For Cora's specialist, and the tests." He didn't look at her. "I should have told you."

"Fifty-two thousand dollars?" my mother said.

"It was for Cora."

"You put our house up, and you didn't tell me?"

"I told Cora," my father said.

My mother turned her head slowly.

Cora's fork went down on her plate without a sound.

"I didn't want you to worry, Mommy," she said. "You were so frightened already."

"You signed it?"

"Daddy needed me to."

"And you told him not to tell Cosima."

Everybody looked at me.

I had said it flatly, and I hadn't planned to say it at all.

"I didn't say that," Cora said.

"Dad did. In the parking lot at the bakery."

"Hugh?" my mother whispered.

"She was afraid Cosima would quit paying," my father said heavily. "That's all."

"That's all," I said.

No one spoke.

Reed's hand moved on the tablecloth, and Cora's moved over it.

"Here's what I'd like," my mother said at last, in a small, hard voice I hadn't heard before. "Cora is getting married. She will be married from this house, in June, in the backyard, with the whole family."

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