While He Built Her Home novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: Compassionate
Valerie's POV
On Monday at nine the chair of the Children's Fund board walked into Linen & Lamp with the treasurer behind her.
I was on the floor with a box cutter, opening a shipment of linen napkins.
Phoebe turned the sign on the door to Closed before I could stand up.
"Mrs. Vaughn," the chair said. "Thank you for seeing us. I know it's early."
"It's Blakely," I said. "I never took Jared's name for the shop."
"Ms. Blakely."
She was an older woman with silver hair, and she sat down on my display bench without looking at the price tag.
The treasurer stayed standing.
She handed me a single sheet of paper, printed from an email.
"We received this at seven this morning," the chair said. "From Brynn Foley, to every member of the board."
I read it.
Brynn had written four paragraphs in her gentlest voice.
She said she was heartbroken.
She said I had been struggling for years with an unstable fixation about my fertility treatments.
She said the label on my pill bottle had been altered by me, that her ex-husband was a vindictive man who had been paid by someone to lie, and that the charity party had been disrupted by a woman in a medical crisis.
The last line asked the board to be compassionate.
"She wants you to be compassionate," I said.
"She wants us to disbelieve forty witnesses," the treasurer said.
The chair folded her hands.
"I have to ask you, Ms. Blakely. Is there any chance the label is not what it appears to be?"
"None."
"Do you have a way to show us?"
"I do," Clayton said.
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