He Gave Me Fifty Dollars to Live, I Left Him with Nothing novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: The Roof

My mother's house in Warwick had a blue door and a new roof.

I stood on the front step with the folder under my arm and the watch in my pocket, and I rang the bell.

She opened it in an apron.

Her eyes went from my face to the folder and back.

"Rosalind," she said. "I've called you half a dozen times."

"I know. I'm here."

"Come in. I'll make tea."

"I don't want tea."

She stepped aside anyway, and I walked past her into the kitchen.

The new refrigerator hummed in the corner.

It was steel, with a water dispenser in the door.

I put my hand flat on it.

"A Christmas thank-you," I said. "From his driver."

"Roz."

"Sit down, Mom."

She sat at the small table.

I opened the folder and set the statement in front of her, with a line circled in red.

*Educational consulting. $4,000. Warwick.*

"Read it."

She put on her glasses.

She read it for a long time.

"I don't understand," she said. "It says educational consulting."

"There's no consulting. You never consulted on anything."

"Philip said it was a gift."

"What did he say it was for?"

Her hands twisted the corner of her apron.

"He said you were fragile," she said. "He said he wanted me close, in case you had a hard day. He said I was the only one who could keep you calm. I thought, what mother wouldn't? I was sixty. I was behind on the mortgage. I thought it was help."

"You thought it was his money."

"Whose would it be?"

"Her father's."

She went completely still.

"What?"

"It came from the trust," I said. "The fund my first husband's life insurance and the truck company's settlement made for Maisie. Two million four hundred thousand dollars. Philip became its trustee when he adopted her."

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