Chapter 16: The Retainer

Bram's POV

Paula Winslow counted the cash twice, and she billed me for the second time.

"Five thousand," she said, and wrote a receipt in blue pen on a pad. "That covers the hearing and the work before it. She doesn't know?"

"She doesn't."

"She'll want to."

"She'll want to pay it herself," I said. "She'll be right. I'll tell her after Thursday."

Paula took off her glasses.

"Mr. Keller. I've been doing this for twenty years. A woman who finds out the man helping her was paying behind her back doesn't thank him."

"I know."

"Then why?"

I looked at the dry cleaner's steam coming up through the floor vent.

"Because I watched my father do it," I said. "I watched somebody else decide what he could afford, and I watched him lose every time."

"Your father gambled."

"Yes."

"Hazel's money isn't yours to protect."

"No," I said. "I know that too."

She tore the receipt off the pad and held it out.

I folded it into my apron pocket, where I keep the things I have to remember.

That night the kitchen was quiet, and Hazel sat on a flour crate with the court papers across her knees.

She had read them four times.

She didn't say so.

I stood at the range stirring a pot of stock I didn't need and watched her turn the page again.