Chapter 17: Paid in Full

Nathaniel's POV

I paid Gretchen's guarantee on Tuesday night, in my lawyer's conference room, with a pen I had owned since college.

Three hundred and sixty thousand dollars left my account in one transfer.

The Holloway accounting office was closed, so it went to the account named on the page, and a clerk emailed back a receipt stamped Paid in Full.

My lawyer read it twice and set it on the table between us.

"Helen can't refuse it," he said. "It's the amount, to the account, inside the seventy-two hours. She can only pretend it hasn't happened."

"Then she'll pretend in front of everyone."

"You're sure you don't want to tell Ms. Callister?"

"She told me she can't owe me the Keating land."

"That's a different thing."

"It's the same thing, to her." I signed the last page. "She'll hear it when Helen stands up and calls the debt."

Gretchen came to my office at nine to see the receipt.

She stood at my window in her black funeral dress, looking across at the Grand with her arms around herself.

"I'll pay you back," she said. "I'll teach. I'll play weddings. It will take me years."

"Nothing owed."

"That's a lie."

"It's the house rule." I almost smiled. "A woman taught it to me."

She laughed, once, and it was the first sound like it I had heard from her.

"Does she know you love her?"

"She knows I want her."

"That isn't what I asked."

I did not answer.

At ten to four the next morning I stood in the alley behind Callister's with my hand on the back door.

The bakery lights were on.

Through the window I could see her at the long worktable in her apron, with her hair tied up.

She had flour to her elbows and she was working a mass of dough with the heels of her hands.

She was making Mr. Keating's plain cakes, for the old ladies to eat with tea.

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