His Billionaire Family Tested My Poverty, but Their Heir Was Broke novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Cold Consultant

In a staff room fitted with an $11,000 cot and open windows, Laura bleeds the radiator and heats the whole house, to the horror of the family, until headlights announce her sister.

My bed for the weekend was an eleven-thousand-dollar cot.

The tag was still tied to the frame with a ribbon.

It said HAND-STAINED WORKHOUSE FINISH, which I took to mean someone had been paid to make it look unloved.

The Lean Rooms were the staff rooms in the east wing, scrubbed and emptied of anything comfortable.

A man in a parka had been hired for six thousand dollars to make them drafty.

He had opened every window an inch and left a card on my pillow.

"Room temperature: fifty-one degrees," the card said. "Authentic."

Down the hall I could see the housekeeper asleep in her own bed, wearing her own coat.

I sat on the cot, and it creaked in a way that cost money.

A knock came at midnight.

Arthur stood in the doorway with a sleeping bag under his arm and his glasses fogged.

"They gave me the valet's cupboard," he said. "It has a door and no heat. I thought you'd want to know where I am."

"Does the cupboard have a window?" I asked.

"It has a vent."

"Come in."

He sat on the floor with his back against the wall.

He pulled a folded paper out of his wallet and smoothed it on his knee.

It was a receipt from the cash machine at the gas station, printed that afternoon.

AVAILABLE BALANCE: $1,306.14.

Under it he laid a letter on cream paper with the Endicott crest.

DRAW SUSPENDED PENDING CONFIRMATION, it said, and it was signed by his mother.

I read both twice.

"That's very good," I said. "Who made the receipt?"

"A machine. At the gas station," he said.

"And the letter?" I asked.

"My mother."

"Which looks exactly like what your mother would make for a test," I said.

Arthur put his head back against the wall.

"That's what I was afraid of," he said. "It's true, and it looks fake because everything in this house looks fake."

"If I say it, it sounds like a line. If I don't say it, I'm lying."

I did not know if he was telling the truth.

I knew he was shivering.

"Here's what I can do," I said. "If it's real, you need dinner. If it's a test, you need dinner."

"Either way I'm not going to bet on which."

I dug in my coat pocket and came out with a granola bar.

I keep one in every coat.

Somebody always turns up hungry.

He took it with both hands.

"I wanted to tell you in the car," he said.

"I know. You told me about the card," I said. "I paid for the gas."

"I'll pay you back," he said.

"With what, a cupboard?"

He laughed, and then he stopped, and then his face did something I didn't like.

"I wanted this to be nice for you," he said. "I wanted you to meet them and have it be nice."

"It's an eleven-thousand-dollar cot," I said. "But you're in the room."

He ate the granola bar very slowly.

"I've had strange luck this year," I said, because it was quiet and I wanted to give him something.

"Mom's furnace got fixed by the church fund in January."

"In March the bank sold her mortgage, and the new owner stamped it paid in full."

"That's lucky," Arthur said.

"My student loans got forgiven. Holly's salon chairs got forgiven. I keep waiting for the bill."

Arthur said nothing, and I decided he was thinking.

I stood up, because my feet were cold, and so was the whole room.

Under the open window sat a cast-iron radiator, painted an artistic gray.

It was stone cold, and the little brass valve at the top had been taped shut.

"Somebody turned off the heat and taped the knob so nobody could fix it," I said.

I peeled the tape and fitted the brass key from my key ring.

I carry a radiator key, because I work at a plumbing supply wholesaler and people give them to me for free.

I turned it a quarter turn.

The radiator gave one long hiss.

Arthur sat up.

I turned it another quarter, and somewhere beneath us the pipes banged twice, hard.

A door opened down the hall.

I closed the window and turned the key one more time.

All at once the whole east wing began to knock and clank and warm.

The housekeeper came out into the corridor in her coat and then took it off.

The cook came out behind her and put her hand on the wall, and said a word I won't repeat.

Esther arrived in a quilted robe with her green notebook.

"My cold bath is warm," she said, appalled. "I'm going to lose forty points."

Peter ran up with his clipboard. "Who touched the cold?" he said. "I paid for that cold."

Behind him, in a silk robe with her silver hair perfect, came Winifred.

She looked at the radiator, at the key in my hand, and at Arthur sitting on the floor with a granola bar wrapper.

"Miss Finch," she said, "you have fixed the poverty."

"It was only a little air in the pipes," I told her.

"You have fixed it in eleven rooms," Winifred said.

"Then you're welcome in eleven rooms," I said.

Outside, headlights swept across the ceiling.

A car door shut, and then a suitcase hit gravel with a wheel that needed oil.

I knew that wheel.

"That will be your sister," Winifred said. "I invited her."

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