He Gave Me Fifty Dollars to Live, I Left Him with Nothing novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: Under Oath

Roz's POV

I called Marcy from the edge of the airfield with my bandaged hand pressed against my ear.

She picked up on the first ring.

"Roz, I didn't do anything. I swear."

"Ninety thousand dollars landed in your cafe account at 5:40."

"I saw it at six. I haven't touched it." Her voice cracked. "There was a text. It said, For your trouble after Wednesday."

"Whose number?"

"Philip's."

"Don't spend it," I said. "Don't move it. Bring it to the courthouse, and bring the text."

"Roz, are you sure you want me there?"

"I don't want you anywhere," I said. "I want you under oath."

She cried a little, and I hung up before it could reach me.

Wednesday morning the family courthouse was full to the doors.

The clip had gone everywhere.

Strangers lined the steps with their phones up, and one woman held a sign that said *Pay her what he owes*.

Philip sat at the respondent's table in a navy suit.

The silver-pen attorney sat beside him with a new, colder face.

Maisie was not there, and the judge had insisted on that.

Tobias sat behind me in the first row, and I felt him there the whole morning.

My mother went first.

She walked to the stand in her blue dress, with the shoe box in both arms.

The bailiff swore her in.

She set the box on the rail and spoke into the microphone without being asked.

"I am the petitioner's mother," she said. "I'm sixty-one, and I live in Warwick."

"Ma'am," the judge said, "what is in the box?"

"Four years of bank books. One hundred and sixty-one thousand dollars, which belongs to my granddaughter. I spent thirty-one thousand of it on a roof and a refrigerator."

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