My Fake Wedding Was the Start of Their Real Prison novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Tower
The bus driver honked twice.
The teachers were waving at me through the windows.
Brett's father stood at the curb and waited for my answer.
I thought about every Sunday dinner at his table.
The pot roast. The football on mute. The way he always called me kiddo and never once asked what I did at his company.
"I'm not saving it for you," I said.
His face fell.
"I'll make my mother's firm an offer for it in bankruptcy court. A fair one." I nodded at the bus. "And the first dollar out of that building goes to them. Every one of them, before any lender, before any Corwin."
"And me?"
"You signed loan draws on a letter you never checked," I said. "You'll get a lawyer. And a seat in the back of the courtroom."
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he nodded, slowly, and put his empty hands back in his pockets.
"Your father would've said the same thing," he said.
"I know," I said. "I'm just late saying it."
I climbed onto the bus and rode back to the hotel with forty-one teachers singing camp songs.
The bankruptcy took four weeks.
I flew to Los Angeles three times.
Brett's father sat in the back row of the courtroom every time, and never said a word.
On the fourth Monday in December, the judge approved the sale.
Lowell Capital owned the Ocean Avenue tower.
The teachers' thirty-one million came off the top, with interest.
I called the retired teacher from the courthouse steps.
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