He Gave Me $18, So I Left Him with Nothing novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Eighteen Dollars and Forty Cents

Dean looked at the gold card by his glass.

"Dean," Constance said. "Put that down."

He did not.

He picked it up, and he took a dime out of his pocket, and he began to scratch.

Nobody spoke.

I could hear the silver flake onto the cloth.

The first digit came up.

A one.

A cousin at the far end started to laugh, and the woman next to her put a hand on her arm.

The second digit.

An eight.

Then the cents, last, as always.

Forty.

Dean read it out in a voice that cracked on the second word.

"Eighteen dollars and forty cents."

"What is this?" Constance said. "A joke?"

"It's a game, Constance," I said. "A family tradition. It's meant to be lighthearted."

The minister put down his fork.

I stood up.

I did it slowly, and my chair scraped the floor, and every head turned.

"That's what Dean has left," I said. "Eighteen dollars and forty cents. Let me tell you why."

I looked down the long table, at the cousins and the guild and the man from the bank.

"The yard on Water Street is mine. My father put it in my name before he died."

"Katherine," Constance said.

"For five years, Gaffney Management ran it on a paper I signed at his funeral lunch. In that time, it cleared about two million dollars."

Someone whistled under their breath.

"I got eighteen forty a month. The rest bought this house, a boat slip, a cabin in Michigan and three trucks. It paid Dean's gambling marker in Toledo, four times."

"That's slander," Constance said.

"Is it?" I turned. "Sir, whose name is on the deed to this house?"

The man from the bank had gone white.

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