Chapter 5: April

On Saturday morning Crispin showed up at nine to fix the faucet, as Grandma's card had ordered.

Hattie was still asleep in her fort.

He knelt under the kitchen sink with a wrench and a flashlight in his teeth.

I stood over him with two mugs of coffee.

"What did you agree with my father?" I said.

He took the flashlight out of his mouth.

"It's about the apartment. He wanted it kept quiet."

"Kept quiet from who?"

"From you, at first."

I put his coffee on the counter.

"Show me."

He sat back on his heels and looked up at me for a long moment.

Then he went to the drawer by the fridge, the one Grandma kept full of takeout menus.

He took out a green receipt book.

He opened it on the table and turned it toward me.

The top page was in Grandma's slanted hand.

Received from R. Swanson, twelve months, unit 1A, paid in full, January 6th.

Under it, in Crispin's block print, he had added a note.

Told C. Swanson at the funeral, March 29th. Told C. Swanson by phone, April 14th. He said he'd tell L. himself.

I looked at the dates.

"April to October," I said. "That's six months."

"Yes."

"For six months I babysat a seven-year-old twice a week and slept in a room I shared with her.

"And I had an apartment. A whole apartment. Paid for."

"Lacey."

"I looked at rentals. I looked at roommate ads."

"I cried in the pharmacy bathroom over a studio that cost nine hundred dollars. And you knew."

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