Chapter 11: The Auction

The auction room is a hotel ballroom in Midtown with the chandeliers turned up too bright.

Forty folding chairs. A podium. A man in a gray suit holding a wooden gavel.

Creditors fill the seats.

They're men in loose ties and women with leather folders, and they're all here to buy someone's bad luck.

Claire's hand is cold in mine.

She changed out of yesterday's coat into one of my sweaters.

The bruise on her lip has gone purple.

"You don't have to do this," she whispers.

"Sit."

"Ava. It's four hundred and eighty thousand."

"I know what it is."

We take two chairs in the third row.

Heads turn.

Somebody murmurs "the nurse" behind us, and somebody else laughs.

Damien isn't here.

I told him not to come.

He's across town, locked in a conference room with the lawyers who can't do anything legal, and I wanted one thing today that was mine.

Gareth sits in the front row, coat across his knee.

He doesn't turn around.

"Lot fourteen," the auctioneer says. "The Sinclair clinic note. Original balance four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Opening at two hundred."

My paddle is a white square of cardboard with the number 31.

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