My In-Laws Mocked the Tow Driver, Until They Learned I Was Kijin novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Return to Sender

Floyd drives to Meredith's door to give the money back. She shows him a signed form and shuts the door. Preston and two men are waiting at his truck.

I got to Clifford's house at six on Monday morning, before the dew was off the lawn.

I hadn't slept. I had called the bank twice, and both times a recorded voice told me the money could only be returned by the person who sent it.

The sender was a company owned by a family that had just laughed at me for an hour.

The old driver at the gate knew my truck and opened it without a word.

Meredith was on the front porch in a gray sweater with a mug in both hands.

She looked like she hadn't slept either.

"You shouldn't be here," she said.

"I didn't ask for the money, Mer."

"Floyd."

"I mean it. I haven't touched it. I'm sending every dollar back, and I wanted you to hear me say it."

She set the mug on the porch rail very carefully.

Then she took her phone out of her sweater pocket and held it up to me.

It was a photo of a single page. At the top it said: Request for Disbursement, Brannigan Towing.

At the bottom was my signature, dated Thursday.

I knew that signature. I had signed it a hundred times.

"My father's lawyer sent it to me last night," she said. "He said I should know what I was divorcing."

I looked at it for a long time.

"That's my name," I said. "I didn't sign that on Thursday."

"Then who did?"

"I don't know."

I did know one thing.

In September I had signed a last page at Clifford's kitchen table, when he renewed the lease on my tow yard.

He had slid the page across and said, "Just the signature, son. Don't waste your eyes on the rest."

I had never thought about it again.

I couldn't say that to Meredith, because I couldn't say it to myself yet.

"It could be copied from the lease," I said. "Anyone with the lease could copy it."

"Anyone." She laughed, and it wasn't a laugh. "You hear how that sounds? Everyone is lying except you."

"I didn't say that."

"You never say anything." Her voice cracked. "That's the whole problem, Floyd."

She stepped closer, and I could smell the coffee on her.

"Five years of Sundays. Five years of Preston calling you the help, and my aunt asking if you'd brought your own wrench. And you just sat there and ate your roast."

"I was trying to keep the peace."

"You were trying to keep your seat. I begged you once. I said, say one word to them. Do you remember what you said?"

I remembered.

"I said they were your family."

"You said they were my family," she said. "Like that was the end of it. Like it was nothing to do with you."

"Mer."

"I was waiting for you to fight for me, and you just waited with me. So when I heard you wanted money, I believed it, because it was the first time you ever wanted anything out loud."

That hit harder than anything Preston had ever done to me.

I had an answer, but it was a story about a bridge in a country she'd never seen.

It came with a promise I had made when I walked away from it.

I had promised myself I would never be that man again.

I had promised it for her.

"I'm leaving it in the account until I find out where to send it," I said. "I'm not keeping it."

"Do whatever you want. It's yours."

She took her mug and went inside, and the screen door clapped shut.

I stood on the porch for a minute.

On the second floor, a curtain moved. It could have been the wind.

I walked back across the lawn to my truck.

The gate was shut now.

Preston's black Escalade was parked across the driveway behind it, and he was leaning on the hood in a pressed shirt with his arms folded.

Two big men in leather jackets stood on either side of my truck.

One of them had a tire iron held down against his leg.

"Morning, Floyd," Preston said, smiling. "Dad says the money is yours."

He pushed himself up off the hood.

"The garage isn't."

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