Called a Gold Digger, I Returned Everything novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The First Gold Digger

Opal Cudahy lived on the thirty-first floor, and she served dessert first.

"Life is short," she said, sliding a plate of lemon tart across the table at me. "Some of us have noticed."

It was Thursday, one o'clock.

I had taken my lunch hour and a bus, and I was still wearing my work scrubs under my coat.

Her apartment smelled like coffee and furniture polish.

A housekeeper had let me in, set the table, and disappeared without a word.

Opal sat across from me with her reading glasses on their beaded chain and her orange lipstick untouched by the tart.

"You're wondering why I haven't said anything about the check," she said.

"A little."

"It's in my desk. I'm not cashing it. I'm not giving it back either. When you stop being angry, we'll discuss it."

"I'm not angry."

"Dear, you're so angry your fork is shaking."

I put the fork down.

She smiled.

"I was a waitress at the Blue Plate on Halsted," she said. "I was twenty-four, and a man named Cudahy came in every morning for eggs and tipped me forty percent."

"That's a lot."

"That's what his family said too." She picked up her coffee. "They called me a gold digger for twenty years. At Christmas, at funerals, at my own son's wedding. His mother once counted the spoons after I left her house."

"What did you do?"

"I kept the tip jar from the diner," Opal said. "It's on the shelf behind you. Every time one of them said it, I put a quarter in. By the time my husband died it was full."

I turned.

There was a glass pickle jar on the shelf, packed to the neck with coins.

"What was it for?"

"Nothing," she said cheerfully. "It was so I'd remember that I'd heard it."

I laughed, and it surprised me.

Opal looked pleased.

"Now," she said. "Tell me about the sheet."

"You know about the sheet?"

"I know my grandson came home Saturday night and sat in the dark for six hours. He called me Sunday and said, 'Gran, I think I did something terrible,' and then he couldn't say what." She tapped the table. "Show me."

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