Chapter 6: Why He Never Told Me

Caleb was on my mother's porch at nine that night, fixing the gutter by the light of his phone.

It was Tuesday, so he had driven her to the clinic and back before his shift.

He heard my steps on the walk and went still on the ladder.

"Come down," I said. "I have to show you something."

He came down.

I set the coffee tin on the porch rail between us and took the lid off.

He looked at the stacks of receipts for a long moment.

He looked at the cream-colored card on top.

"You went in the studio," he said.

"You gave me the key."

"I gave it to you to keep."

"Caleb." My voice cracked, and I let it. "My father's name is on thirty-seven receipts."

He sat down on the top step and put his elbows on his knees.

I sat beside him, with a foot of cold porch between us.

"Three years ago," he said, "a week after the funeral, Marguerite Thayer came to the diner with a lawyer."

I waited.

"She put a note on the counter. Two hundred and fifty thousand, signed by your dad, secured on this house and on the diner."

He swallowed.

"She said Gus had lent it, and she was calling it in. She gave me thirty days."

"Why you? Why not my mother?"

"Because your mom was on dialysis three days a week by then, and I was the one holding the keys."

His mouth twisted.

"She knew exactly who to scare."

"Was it real?"

"The money was real. The loan wasn't."

He turned his head and looked at me for the first time since the dock.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Broke Up With My Poor Boyfriend to Date a Rich Heir from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.