Double Contract Love novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Study

"You gave me a key," I said. "I came."

Tabitha stood up behind the desk.

She wore black leggings and a black sweater, and she had pulled her glossy hair into a knot.

Without the yellow dress and the sneer she looked years younger than twenty-five.

"We don't have long," she said. "The neighbor's doorbell camera pings Mama when anyone walks up this path."

"Then why am I walking up it?"

"Because I had to do it after dark and I had to do it with nobody watching me, and you are the only person on earth who would come."

"Why would I come? You took my ring."

"I took your ring so she'd let me."

I stared at her.

"Let you what?"

She put her hand flat on the banker's box.

"Lillian, I have been trying to tell you for two months."

"You hugged me at the courthouse and called me big sister."

"Because Mama was watching. She's always watching. If I didn't hate you in public, she wouldn't have let me near the study."

"The note."

"The note was a number you could have called."

"I threw it away."

"I know," she said. "I watched you do it from the Lincoln."

I felt my face go hot, and not from anger.

"Open it," she said.

I crossed the room, took off the lid, and looked.

The box was full of paper.

Bank forms with raised seals, and a bundle of statements clipped together, and three long folded loan agreements from the same lender.

Each one had a street address printed across the top.

Cherokee Road.

"Those are against my father's house," I said.

"Your house. Walt put the deed in your name the week before he died. Mama didn't know until the reading of the will. Do you remember her face?"

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