Chapter 9: The Note

Tania took her three phones and her garment bag and waited in the car, as ordered.

Mal stood at my kitchen sink with his back to me and both hands on the counter.

"I'll write the check," he said.

"What check?"

"The note. Four hundred and ten thousand. I'll have it wired Monday."

"No."

He turned around.

"Edie, it's a rounding error. It's less than I tip."

"No."

"Baskin bought your mortgage to choke you. This ends it in one phone call."

"And then every person in this town learns that the Head married a rich man to pay her debts."

I was shaking.

"That's the story he wants, Malachi. I won't hand it to him."

"I don't care what the town says."

"I do. Four years I have walked into that building and nobody has ever once thought I was bought."

"You are not bought. It's a gift."

"There's no such thing as a gift between us. You wrote the rules yourself. Not one cent from either of us."

"That was before he came after the school with a loan shark's paper!"

His voice cracked across the kitchen.

I had never heard him raise it.

"I won't be your cause," I said. "I won't be a project. You don't get to save me because it's easy."

"Easy?"

He laughed, hard, without humor.

"I haven't slept in a bed for three years, and I've lied to you since the day I picked up that mop."

"I want to give you the one useful thing I have, and you're telling me no because of your ex-husband."

"Because of me."

"Because of him."

"Because it is mine!" I shouted.

"It's my school, it's my fight, and it's the only thing in my life that is entirely mine!"

We stood three feet apart, breathing.

His eyes had gone dark.

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