Chapter 14: Friday at Four

Finbar's POV

I saw the cream SUV from the end of the dock, and I knew whose it was before the door opened.

Brooke's mother was standing in the gravel with Ingrid, a long envelope between them.

"Stay here," I said to Hattie.

"Not a chance."

We walked up together, and the three men from the shop came out to stand by the travel lift.

They did not pretend to be busy.

"There he is," Brooke's mother said. "Finbar, I was just explaining to Ms. Halvorsen how I'd like this to end."

"With me out of a room I pay for."

"With you home, where somebody can look after you."

Ingrid held up the envelope so I could see the check inside it.

"She wants me to tell the papers you aren't well," she said.

"Do you?" I asked her mother.

"Brooke is very worried."

"Brooke is a lot of things."

"That is a lot of money to offer a stranger," Hattie said.

Ingrid's face did not change, but I saw her jaw set.

"It's a private matter," she said.

"Then it can stay private," Brooke's mother said. "You only have to take it."

Ingrid took the check out of the envelope.

She looked at it for one second, and then she tore it in half.

She tore the halves in half again, and she put the pieces into the older woman's handbag, which was open on her arm.

"The yard is closed to you," she said. "Get off my gravel."

The old man with the mustache started to clap, once, and then stopped because nobody else had.

"You're a very foolish girl," Brooke's mother said.

"I'm thirty. I've been called worse by better-dressed people."

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