My Future Doesn't Have Room for You novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Demand
On Wednesday night, someone knocked on Esther's back door with the flat of a hand.
It was after nine, and the kitchen light was the only one on in the house.
Esther looked at me over her glasses.
"That isn't a neighbor," she said. "A neighbor uses the front."
I opened the door.
Janet stood on the step with no coat on, in the cardigan she wore to clean.
Her hair had come loose from its clip, and she had left her pearls somewhere.
In her right hand she held a long white envelope, folded in half and gripped hard enough to bend it.
"Hallie," she said. "I need to talk to you."
"You can say it from there."
"It's cold."
"Yes."
She looked past me at Esther, who had not moved from the stove, and then she looked back.
"This came today," she said, and she held up the envelope.
"I know what it is."
"Five hundred and forty-five thousand dollars."
Her voice cracked in the middle of the number.
"Three hundred forty-eight from the trust, and the rest from Social Security, and a letter saying that a person will call me about an interview. I don't have that. Nobody has that."
"You had it," I said. "You had all of it, a month at a time."
"I spent it on the children!"
"You spent it on your children. I was one of the ones in the basement."
She pressed the envelope to her mouth.
Then she took it away, and her face changed, and she was smiling again.
It was the smile she wore to church, and it was even more frightening, because I could see her working to hold it up.
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