Chapter 23: The Last Page

I finished the ledger at two in the morning, in chair four.

The house was quiet.

Dottie and Frankie had gone to bed in the east guest room, with the statute book between them on the pillow.

Brent had driven his mother to the bridge and had not come back.

I sat with my feet tucked under me and the legal pad on my knee, and I added the last column.

Eighteen thousand four hundred dollars, I had written, on the first night.

Minus the credit, at fifty dollars a day.

Minus the hedge.

At the bottom of the page was a line I had never written before, and I wrote it now in my neatest hand.

Balance: $0.00. Paid in full.

I looked at it for a long time.

It was the first debt I had ever finished, and it didn't feel like a victory.

It felt like standing in a doorway with nobody holding it shut.

"Poppy," Lucan said from the doorway.

He had his sleeves rolled and his hair standing up.

"You're up."

"I could not sleep." He looked at the pad. "Is that what I think it is?"

"The last page."

"Show me."

I held it out.

He read it, and his jaw moved.

"Paid in full," he said.

"The terms say I'm free to go."

"They do."

"One year and three days. I'm three days late."

"You are."

I waited.

He stood there with the page in his hand, and the silence stretched until I thought I would scream.

Then he tore it in half.

He tore it in half again, and then again, and he let the pieces fall on the rug in front of the chair.

"Lucan!"

"I broke the term," he said. "Bill me."

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