Chapter 16: The Pen

Bev unlocked the diner at nine on Sunday night, turned the sign to closed, and pointed us toward the back booth.

"Sit," she said. "All three. Don't make it weird."

"It's already weird," Cal said.

"Then sit weird."

We sat, Cal and Devin on one side of the booth and me on the other with my mother's lockbox between my hands.

Bev went into the office and came out carrying a flat gray safe the size of a bread box.

She set it down and wiped her glasses on her apron.

"Joan asked me to keep something," she said. "Three years ago, almost. I've never opened it except once, the week she died."

"What is it?" I said.

"What she made Dale give her the day she signed."

She turned the dial, and the door swung open.

Inside there was one folded paper and a diner key on a string.

Bev laid the paper on the table and smoothed it flat.

It was two pages, stapled at the corner, and the typing was small and old-fashioned.

I read the top line twice.

"Fifteen thousand," I said.

"For the roof," Bev said. "The roof leaked into the kitchen, and the furnace went too."

"She borrowed fifteen from Dale at five percent and paid back four hundred a month."

"That's the thirty-one money orders."

"That's two and a half years of them. She had seven payments left."

I put my hand over my mouth.

"She was nearly done," I said.

"She would have finished it by May."

My eyes stung, and I let them.

Devin slid a napkin across the table without a word.

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