Chapter 22: Opaline's Offer

I didn't take the envelope.

Wilma came and stood beside me with her coffee. Jubal stayed on the loading dock, close enough to hear.

"How much?" I said.

"Five hundred thousand dollars."

Opaline tapped the envelope against the chain-link.

"A cashier's check, made out to you. As good as cash. More than he took, with interest. Your lawyer can count it."

"How do you know what he took?"

"I'm his mother. I know what my son does."

"Since when?"

She smiled a little.

"Since always, Haddie."

A barge was going by under the bridge, slow and low in the water.

"He made bail at five this morning," she said. "I paid it. He's asleep at my house, with a lawyer coming at ten."

"This ends today, or it gets very ugly for everyone."

"It's already ugly. He was on my second floor with bolt cutters."

"He was desperate. Men do foolish things when they're desperate."

She pushed the envelope through the gap at the edge of the gate.

"So take this, and let him stop being desperate."

"Why does my auction scare you so much?"

"It doesn't."

"You drove here alone at seven in the morning with half a million dollars."

Her gloved fingers tightened on the envelope.

"Do you know what's in that unit?" I asked.

"I know my son."

"That isn't what I asked."

For a second her face did something I'd never seen it do.

It went blank.

"I was there when he did what he did," she said. "It was a loan between family. That's all it ever was."

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