She Took the Rags, I Took the Empire novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Early Note
Adelaide Ellingham came into The Dime at twelve-ten, in the middle of the lunch rush.
She wore a pale pink suit and her pearls, and her driver held the door.
The whole diner turned to look.
Nobody in that mill town had ever seen a pink suit in the doorway, and nobody had ever seen one sit at the counter.
She sat on the stool where Dinah's father had once served my father pie.
"Coffee, please," she said to me. "And whatever the pie is today."
I was holding a coffeepot in one hand and a rag in the other.
I put the pot down.
"Apple," I said.
"How lovely."
I cut her a slice and set it in front of her with a fork.
She picked up the fork and looked at it, and then at me.
My hair was jaw-length and my cheek was taped, and I knew she was counting both.
"Your sister looks so well in the dress," Adelaide said, quietly enough that only I could hear. "Better than you ever did."
"Is that why you came?"
"I came to be kind."
She laid a long cream envelope on the counter.
"Leopold has asked me to call in the note on this building and the house behind it. The full balance is due by noon tomorrow."
Behind me the grill went silent.
Dinah's father had stopped with a plate in each hand.
"The paper said the twentieth," he said.
"The paper says what the bank's lawyers say, Mr. Fenner. And the lawyers say that when a borrower shelters a woman who is being investigated for fraud, the terms change."
"Who's being investigated?" I said.
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