Called a Gold Digger, I Returned Everything novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Paid in Full

I put a cashier's check on the desk in front of his whole office, and his grandmother takes it out of my hand.

The lobby of Cudahy Holdings had a marble floor, a wall of glass, and a receptionist who watched me cross it.

It was nine o'clock Monday morning, and the elevators were still dumping people out.

I had called in to work and told my boss I'd be late.

I had the cashier's check in a plain white envelope, and I had a copy of my notebook pages folded in my back pocket.

I walked straight to the front desk and put the envelope down on the marble.

"I'd like Dalton Cudahy to come down," I said. "Please."

The receptionist picked up her phone with two fingers.

By the time she hung up, people had started to slow down.

A man in a gray suit stopped to tie a shoe that was already tied.

Two women by the elevators stopped talking.

I recognized one of them from the birthday dinner.

She was the wife of the man in the green tie.

Her husband came through the revolving door a minute later, saw me, and grinned.

The elevator pinged.

Dalton walked out of it, still in yesterday's shirt.

He looked like he hadn't slept.

Lucinda was right behind him with a tablet against her hip and her hair pinned perfectly.

She saw me and put a hand over her heart.

"Susie," she said, in the warmest voice in the building. "Oh, honey. You came."

"I came to return something."

I slid the envelope across the desk.

Dalton didn't look at it.

He looked at me.

"Don't do this," he said quietly.

"It's a cashier's check for eleven thousand, two hundred and six dollars and forty cents."

"Susie."

"Every dinner you paid for. Every train ticket. Half of a winter coat. I wrote down all of it, and I'm giving all of it back."

A few people in the lobby had pulled out their phones.

I let them.

Lucinda stepped forward and put a gentle hand on Dalton's arm.

"Dal, let her," she said. "It's her pride. If you refuse it, she'll feel humiliated."

"I'm not taking it."

"Then she'll feel like you think she's guilty."

That landed, and I watched him realize it.

He opened his mouth, and for once I knew exactly what he was going to say, and it wasn't going to be enough.

"I never wanted it back," he said.

"I know you didn't."

"Then why do it?"

"Because two nights ago I was sitting at your table and everyone in that room had a number for me." I kept my voice level. "Now I've got one for them."

The man in the green tie laughed out loud.

"Eleven grand?" he said to the lobby. "Against four hundred? That's a down payment."

"The four hundred thousand isn't mine," I said. "I never saw it, and I never spent it."

"Sure," he said.

I turned and looked right at him.

"There's a second number," I said.

I pulled the folded pages from my pocket and set them on top of the envelope.

Then I looked back at Dalton.

"Eighteen thousand five hundred dollars," I said. "For my brother's tuition."

The lobby went quiet in a different way.

Dalton's face didn't move.

His jaw did.

Lucinda's hand slipped off his arm.

"Tuition?" she said.

She said it very lightly, but it was the first time all weekend I'd seen her look surprised.

"Dalton paid my brother's tuition gap last spring," I said. "I found out Saturday night. I didn't ask for it, and I didn't know. But I'm paying it back too. Teddy and I will do it in installments, starting this Friday."

"Wow," Lucinda said softly. She turned to Dalton and gave him a sad little smile. "You never told me that."

"It wasn't your business," Dalton said.

"It wasn't on the sheet," she said, to the room. "Susie, that's another eighteen thousand. You see? We never even knew about that."

A woman by the elevators whispered something to her friend.

"So she took even more," said the man in the green tie.

I took one step toward him.

"No," I said. "I was lied to, and now I'm fixing it. There's a difference, and you're welcome to look it up."

Somebody behind me coughed to hide a laugh.

I turned back to Dalton.

"Say it was a gift," I said. "Say it, here, and I'll leave the check on this desk anyway."

He stood there.

I could see him trying to find a way to say it that wouldn't make everything worse.

There wasn't one, and he knew it.

He said nothing at all.

"That's what I thought," I said.

I felt something go cold and settle in my chest.

I picked up my bag and turned for the door.

"Excuse me."

The voice came from the elevator bank behind me, dry and unhurried.

It belonged to a small, upright woman in a camel coat with a silver bob and the brightest orange lipstick I had ever seen.

She walked across the marble.

Everyone in the lobby seemed to straighten up at the same time.

Lucinda's smile did something strange for half a second, and then went back to normal.

"Gran," Dalton said.

"Opal," Lucinda said, a beat later, too sweetly.

The woman ignored both of them.

She picked up the envelope from the front desk, weighed it in her hand, and slid the notebook pages into her coat pocket.

"I'll hold this," she said.

"Mrs. Cudahy," I started.

"Opal," she said. "Lunch on Thursday, dear. My apartment, one o'clock. Don't bring anything."

She looked me up and down, and for the first time in two days someone looked at me like I was a person.

"I was the first gold digger in this family," Opal Cudahy said. "We have a lot to talk about."

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