They Sold Me, Then My Dead Mother Came to Take Me Home novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Denied

The county courtroom was so full on Friday that people stood in the hall with their ears against the doors.

Jonas and I had driven back from Boise through the night, and I had slept for three hours in the truck with my head on his coat.

I walked in with a cardboard banker's box in my arms.

Jonas had offered to carry it.

I had said no.

The mill men made a path for me down the aisle, and as I passed each row someone touched the box with one finger.

Ernest sat at the defense table in the same torn suit.

Beside him was a thin man in a gray vest, with a briefcase on his knees and a bankruptcy petition in a blue folder on the table.

I knew the folder at once.

Corbin had described the color.

My mother sat in the second row between two deputies, in a county orange jumpsuit and no gloves.

I had never seen her hands bare.

They were small and spotted, and they lay in her lap, twisting.

"Miss Eckhart," the judge said. "You are not a party to this hearing."

"I'm an interested party, Your Honor."

"Interested in what?"

"In the company my father is about to bankrupt this afternoon," I said. "His lawyer has the petition on the table."

Ernest's lawyer shot to his feet.

"Your Honor, that is a privileged document..."

"Then you won't mind if I describe it," I said. "It's drawn up to be filed by one o'clock, the day before my grandmother's shares vest in my name. It's meant to leave me forty percent of a pile of debts."

A murmur ran through the room.

"Sit down, Mr. Eckhart," the judge said to my father, who had half risen.

He sat.

I put the box on the clerk's table and took off the lid.

"Your Honor, yesterday afternoon I opened a safe deposit box in Boise, in the name of Pine Ridge Supply. My brother gave me the key. This is what was in it."

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