Chapter 1 - Under the Table
When Lucas Dawson pushed through the front door of the brick house in Brookhaven at eleven-thirty on a Saturday morning, he expected to grab the leather folder he’d left on the hall table and get back to his office before the bank meeting at three.
Instead he heard laughter from the dining room.
Not the easy kind. The brittle kind people used when something ugly was happening and no one wanted to be the first to stop it.
He stepped in and saw his mother crouched beside the table in her green dress, one hand twisted in Gwen’s dark hair, the other shoving a chicken bone toward Gwen’s mouth. His wife was on her knees on the marble floor, eight months pregnant, her pink gown bunched at her thighs, one hand protecting her belly.
“Under the table is where beggars belong,” Brenda said, cold as cut glass.
“Don’t ever touch her again.”
Lucas was across the room before he heard his own voice. He pulled Brenda back so hard she lost balance and fell against a dining chair. The six women at the table jerked upright, wineglasses in hand. Two looked away. One still had a laugh caught in her throat.
Gwen gagged and spat the bone into a cloth napkin, crying without sound.
Lucas dropped to his knees. “Gwen. Look at me. Are you hurt?”
“She grabbed me when I said I wasn’t cleaning under the table.” Gwen’s voice broke. “She said I needed to learn my place.”
Brenda rose, smoothing her skirt as if she had only corrected a child’s manners. “Ask your wife why she’s been digging through company expenses and trying to blow up the Mercer deal on the day you need the bank.”
The words hit Lucas almost as hard as the sight in front of him.
On the sideboard, his forgotten folder lay open.
May you like
A yellow sticky note was stuck to the first page in Gwen’s handwriting.
Before you sign anything, please look at Brenda’s Mercer reimbursements.
