Chapter 18: Installments

Susie's POV

Teddy set the rules for the first payment.

"On the porch," he said. "Six o'clock. He signs a receipt. Nobody says 'keep it.'"

"Who's nobody?" I asked.

"You and him. Both of you have a problem."

It was the first of December, and it was already dark.

Teddy stood at the top of our porch steps with an envelope, his hood up, bouncing on his toes.

I stood beside him with my own envelope, five hundred dollars from three weeks of paychecks.

Dalton came up the walk at six on the dot.

He wore the dark coat from the night of the rain.

He carried a folded paper under one arm.

He stopped on the bottom step, because Teddy had told him to.

"Two hundred," Teddy said, and held out his envelope.

Dalton looked at it.

I watched him fight it.

I watched the sentence rise in him, the one he'd said to me a hundred times.

I watched him swallow it.

"Thank you," he said. "I'll take it."

He took it with both hands.

"Receipt," said Teddy.

"I brought a pen."

"You brought a napkin." Teddy squinted at it. "That's a napkin."

"It was the only paper in the car."

Dalton wrote on the napkin against his knee.

Received from T. Sedlak, $200, with thanks. D. Cudahy.

Teddy read it twice.

"You have to put the date. And the balance."

"Balance?"

"Eighteen thousand three hundred," said Teddy. "Remaining. My sister taught me."

Dalton wrote it down.

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