100% Compatibility novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: What He Was Told

"What is this?" I said.

I held it up between two fingers, the gray creases, the letterhead, the line in typed capitals above my signature.

Ronan was still on the floor among the pieces of the mug.

He looked at the paper in my hand, and all the color left his face.

"Give it to me," he said.

"No."

"Jacqueline."

"You've carried this around for seven years," I said.

"It's soft as cloth."

"What is it?"

He got to his feet slowly.

He didn't reach for it.

He pulled a towel off the oven door and wrapped it around his waist.

"My mother gave it to me," he said.

"Three weeks after the test."

"I'd gone to her office with the printout, with a name on it, and I said, I found my hundred."

"I said, who is Jacqueline Keogh?"

He swallowed.

"She said you were a coach trainee on your first contract."

"She said you'd taken the test at the booth, and that she'd shown you the number herself."

"Shown me," I said.

"She told me she called you in, and you knew."

"She told me she'd explained what the number meant for the firm.

No match above ninety-five could ever be published, she said, and you'd asked what it was worth."

I could hear the clock in the hall.

My hands had started to shake, and I put the paper on the counter so that I would not tear it.

"Worth," I said.

"She said you asked for forty thousand dollars," said Ronan, "to withdraw."

"And that you signed, and that you'd already been seeing Barrett for a week."

"She gave me that to read in her office, with the door shut."

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