Dumped at the Courthouse, Married by Noon novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: The Greenhouse
I put the checkbook in my bag.
I know that was not polite.
I walked out of the brewery past the brewers and the steel tanks without saying goodbye to anyone.
Liesl lived in a tall red-brick house on Summit Avenue, with a glass greenhouse built onto the back.
I had been there once, for Sunday dinner.
I rang the bell and heard nothing.
A housekeeper in a cardigan opened the door and told me, in a gentle voice, that Mrs. Rausch was in the greenhouse.
"She said you might come," the woman added.
I walked through a dark hall and a kitchen that smelled of bread.
The greenhouse door was open.
Warm, wet air rolled out, thick with the smell of earth and tomato vines.
Liesl sat on an iron bench among rows of potted lemons, in her wool coat, with her cane across her knees.
Pretzel lay at her feet.
"Hello, dear," she said.
I took the checkbook out of my bag and held up the stub.
"What is this?"
She looked at it for a long time.
"It's a check," she said. "I wrote it on the second of October."
"For sixty thousand dollars."
"Yes."
"To the man who left me at the courthouse."
"Yes."
My voice shook in a way I hated.
"Why?"
She folded her hands on the duck-head cane.
"Sit," she said. "Please."
"I'd rather stand."
"Then stand."
She was quiet for a moment, listening to the drip of a hose.
"I have watched you for a year, Jean," she said. "Not like a spy. Like an old woman with a dog."
"What?"
"Pretzel had a bad hip. I took him to Grand Avenue Animal Hospital every Tuesday for physical therapy. You were the tech who held him on the table and sang to him."
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