Loved Twice by the Hockey Star novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Offer

I didn't touch the check.

I read the papers under it instead.

The lawyer had used my real name.

Britta Anne Skoglund, also known as Kate Lind.

Full legal and physical custody of the minor child to Erik Dag Haugland.

The mother to reside outside the state of Minnesota.

No contact without the father's written consent.

The door opened behind me.

Jodie had seen the suit through the glass.

She came in with Ingrid's empty pudding cup still in her hand, and a nurse came in behind her with a clipboard, because nothing on the sixth floor stays private for long.

"What's this?" Jodie said.

"Mr. Haugland's buying my daughter," I said.

The lawyer cleared his throat.

"That's not how I'd put it."

"How would you put it?"

"Mr. Haugland is offering a structured arrangement in the child's best interest. Her medical costs covered in full. Your outstanding debt in Fargo settled. A generous sum to begin again elsewhere."

"And the warrant?"

Dag answered that one himself.

"The warrant stays asleep. Nobody in Lake County is looking for a dead name. Leave quietly and they never will."

Jodie said a word I won't repeat in front of a nurse.

The nurse wrote something on her clipboard that I'm fairly sure wasn't medical.

I picked up the papers.

They were thick and expensive and stapled at the corner.

"You did this before," I said to Dag. "Seven years ago. Only it was four hundred dollars."

His smile didn't move.

"I don't know what you mean."

I tore the papers in half.

Then in half again.

It was harder than it looks in movies, with the staple, and I had to work at it.

I didn't care.

I dropped the pieces on the coffee table on top of his check.

"Your son can pay for her himself," I said. "He's her father."

"He doesn't know that yet."

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