An Understated Dominance novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: What I Owe You

Delgado Hardware opened at seven-thirty, and I was standing outside the door at seven-twenty with a brass key in my fist.

I had not slept.

Fieldwell's accounts had reopened at midnight, exactly as the banker had promised.

The payroll cleared at five in the morning.

Bev had texted me a single photo of the screen with no words, and then eleven crying faces.

I had read it in the dark at my kitchen table, and then I had put on my camel coat and driven across town.

A boy in an orange apron unlocked the door and turned the sign.

"We're open," he said, eyeing the key. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for the man upstairs."

"The guy who does the money? He's not in till eight."

"I'll wait."

I walked in.

The store smelled of machine oil, cedar, and sawdust.

There were aisles of nails sorted by size in wooden bins, and a wall of paint swatches, and a rack of long-handled rakes.

A man was already at the counter, a customer in a plaid coat, buying a snow shovel.

Two older women stood in the paint aisle arguing about beige.

The woman behind the register wore reading glasses and a name tag that said OWNER.

She looked at me and then at the key.

"You're the wife," she said.

"I'm, yes. I suppose I am."

"He talks about you."

"Does he?"

"Not much. But he talks."

She went back to ringing up the shovel.

I stood on the worn floorboards and felt the whole shop listening.

I should have waited outside.

I should have said it in the hall upstairs, with the door shut.

But I'd said the cruelest thing of my life in front of four hundred people, and an apology in a hallway wasn't the right size.

At seven-fifty a door opened at the top of the stairs.

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