Chapter 23: What Dustin Owed

I let Dustin in.

I don't know why.

Rafe came out of the bedroom in his jeans and stood in the kitchen doorway with his arms folded.

Dustin looked at the bruises on his face for a long moment.

"I'm not here to ask anything," Dustin said. "I'm here to tell you something, and then you can throw me out."

He sat down at my table without being asked.

He looked about ten years older than he had that morning.

"Four years ago I took eighty thousand dollars out of Dad's estate," he said. "It was for the down payment on my condo."

I stared at him.

"I told myself I'd put it back by spring. Then spring came, and it was a year."

"Victoria kept the books. She found it."

"She sat across from me in my kitchen and said she wouldn't tell you or Ross."

He rubbed his eyes.

"She only needed me to stop asking questions. And then to sign when she asked."

"So you signed."

"For three years."

"And you let Rafe go to jail," I said.

"I let him go to jail."

He turned in the chair and looked up at Rafe.

"I put you on the asphalt," he said. "I knew what that was. I knew by the third second."

Rafe said nothing.

"I'm not asking you to say it's all right."

"Good," said Rafe.

"I'd like to put it right. I don't know how much of it I can."

"You can start by saying it where the people were," Rafe said.

Dustin nodded slowly.

Then he took an envelope from his jacket and set it on the table.

It held the signed trustee transfer for the Linden Road house, with my name on the line where the owner goes.

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