The Secret Between Us novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Note
By Friday morning the whole yard knew.
The bank had called the note.
Nine hundred thousand dollars, due in full, and an account frozen until somebody explained how it would be paid.
I learned it the way everyone else did, standing in the cold with my coffee at the foot of the main dock.
Friday was payday.
The paymaster came out of the office with a stack of envelopes and a face the color of putty.
"I'm sorry," he said. "The bank won't release the payroll."
Nobody spoke.
There were forty-one of us on that dock, shipwrights and riggers and the two women from the paint shed.
Men I'd known since I was a girl stood with their hands in their jackets, doing sums in their heads.
They were doing the same sums I was.
Rent, truck payments, a daughter's braces, a mortgage on a house three streets from the water.
"It's the old woman," somebody muttered. "She's squeezing us."
"It's the family," somebody else said. "They always squeeze."
Norris came out of the office behind the paymaster.
He looked as though he hadn't slept.
He opened his mouth, and nothing came out of it.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Secret Between Us are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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