My Husband Left Me Out of the Christmas I Paid For, So I Left novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Check

Ellie's bakery cart stood at the end of the ferry dock every morning, and by seven there were twenty people around it with paper cups.

Ferry workers, a man with a snowmobile trailer, two nurses going off shift, and the man in the plow cap.

They all turned when the white sedan stopped, and they stayed turned.

Clinton's father walked across the ice-crusted boards toward me, slowly, with the long envelope in both hands.

Stian stood at my shoulder.

He did not touch me, and he did not leave.

Ellie came out from behind the cart with a coffee pot, and behind her, in a borrowed apron with flour on her sleeve, was Kendra.

She had slept on Ellie's floor.

She looked at her father and went still.

"Dawn," he said.

His voice was very old.

"I won't ask for much of your morning."

"You're welcome to all of it."

"No," he said. "I'm not."

He held out the envelope.

"There's a cashier's check inside. It's for one hundred seventy-six thousand, four hundred dollars. That's every payment, to the dollar. I checked it twice."

I did not take it.

"Where did it come from?"

"I sold the truck yesterday," he said. "The rest I took from our savings."

"The truck was bought with your money, so it goes first. The savings is mine and Marjorie's, and I'd like that to be the first thing I've given you."

"Mr. Nordquist..."

"Hear the rest." He reached into his coat and took out a folded paper. "This is a letter from the realtor. The cabin goes on the market in the new year. What it sells for goes first to our savings, and then to whatever else Clinton took from you. If anything's left, it's yours."

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