Desperate Housewife? No, I'm Billion-Dollar Revenge novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Point Four

Rafe Ingram tells Claire about Tarrant Freight and her grandfather's letter, and she decides to let everyone think she is broke; then her mother-in-law walks in with an invoice.

Rafe Ingram was in my hospital room by eight that morning.

The nurse showed him in and then stood in the doorway until I nodded that it was all right.

He was tall, in a dark overcoat still wet from the parking lot, with a leather folder in one hand.

He did not look at Hazel until I told him he could.

"Mrs. Harlan," he said. "I'm sorry for the hour. I flew in overnight. Your grandfather asked that I be the one to tell you."

"My grandfather drove a pickup truck," I said. "He worked in trucking."

"He did," Rafe said. "He drove it to every one of our terminals once a year. There are a hundred and forty of them."

I looked at him.

"Tarrant Freight," he said. "Your mother's family. Your grandfather started it with one used truck in 1971. It moves about four percent of everything shipped across this country."

"He told me it was a small outfit."

"He told everyone that. It was the point."

Rafe opened the folder and set a single page on my bed tray, beside the plastic cup of ice chips.

"At thirty, you receive sixty-two percent of the company and the family trust. Your grandfather wrote the terms himself. They take effect at sunrise on your birthday."

I looked down at the page.

There was a number at the bottom with a lot of zeros.

I stared at them, then looked again.

"That's a typo," I said.

"It isn't."

"It's two billion dollars."

"Two point four," Rafe said. "Before the quarter closes."

My phone was on the tray. I opened my banking app with a thumb that would not hold still.

My checking account, which had held sixteen hundred and forty dollars and then six hundred and forty, now showed a deposit.

Fifty million dollars, posted at 6:02 a.m.

I put the phone face down on the blanket.

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" I said.

"We tried. The law office wrote to you in July, again in August and a third time in September, by certified mail."

"I never got anything."

"The third was signed for at your house by someone with the initials P. Harlan."

"That's my mother-in-law," I said. "She collects our mail when she watches the house."

Rafe said nothing.

I noticed that he said nothing, and I told myself it meant nothing.

"We never heard back," he said. "Under the terms I wasn't allowed to contact you myself before today. I wanted to. For six years I had your address and I wasn't allowed to write you one line."

He said it flatly, as a fact about the paperwork.

"Why did he make it that way?" I asked. "Why hide it?"

"Your grandfather said a man would marry you for it if he knew."

I laughed, and it hurt, because I had stitches.

"He didn't know about Dean," I said.

"He knew about a man like Dean. There's a letter for you, in the folder. He wrote it five years ago."

I took the envelope and unfolded the page. His handwriting had always sloped uphill.

Claire. If you are reading this you are thirty and I'm gone. Tell nobody for one week, not a friend and not a husband, if there is one. Especially not a husband. Watch what he does when he thinks you're poor.

I read it three times.

The ice in the cup had melted to water.

"Mrs. Harlan," Rafe said gently. "Your text said not to tell your husband anything. I'm sorry if that sounded like an order."

"It didn't," I said. "A few hours ago he told me to pay for my own epidural."

His face did not change much. His jaw did.

"Tell me exactly what happened," he said.

I told him in about six sentences. Page nine. The thousand dollars. The receipt on the bed tray.

When I finished he closed the folder and held it flat against his knee.

"Don't spend a cent of that money yet," he said. "Not on a car seat, not on a coffee. Let me call our lawyer."

"I'm going to do something first," I said.

"What?"

"I'm going to let them think I'm broke."

He studied me for a moment.

"Why?"

"Because my grandfather wrote that I should watch."

Hazel turned her whole face toward the sound of my voice and made a small creaking noise.

I lifted her and she stopped.

"Okay," Rafe said, quietly. "I'll keep it off the books for a week. Nobody at the company will say your name."

The door opened.

I knew the sound of those shoes on the linoleum.

Phyllis Harlan came in first, in her church cardigan with her reading glasses on their chain.

Dean came in behind her, with Kelsey two steps behind him.

Phyllis held a sheet of paper in front of her with both hands.

"Good morning, dear," she said. "I've brought your invoice."

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