Chapter 7: Paid

I got dressed in the cleanest jeans I owned.

I was at my OB's front desk when it opened at eight.

"I need you to send that money back," I told the receptionist.

"Back? Ma'am, it's paid."

"I know. Undo it. Make me a refund check, payable to whoever sent it."

She looked at me as if I'd asked her to set the waiting room on fire.

It took forty minutes and a manager.

I walked out with a check for eleven thousand dollars made out to the Kershaw family office.

Clancy was waiting at the curb in the bait truck.

"Monday morning," he said. "He'll be in the board meeting till noon. Top floor of the Meeting Street hotel."

"Drive."

"You're going to walk into his board meeting?"

"I used to work in that building, Clancy. I know where the elevators are."

The Kershaw House on Meeting Street had a lobby full of palms and old brick.

I'd clocked in through the kitchen door four nights a week for a year.

I'd never once come through the front.

Nobody stopped me.

A pregnant woman in jeans, walking fast, looks like she has every right to be wherever she's going.

The boardroom doors were tall and dark and closed.

I opened them.

Twelve people sat around a long table with a view of the church steeples.

Lawton sat at the head.

Libba sat at his right elbow with a laptop, in pearls and a navy cardigan, taking notes.

Every head turned.

"Rue," Lawton said, and stood up.

"Sit down. This won't take long."

I walked the length of the table.

I laid the refund check face up in front of him.

"Somebody paid my doctor this morning. Through the family office."

"I did," he said. "I called it in last night. I should have asked you."

"Yes. You should have."

An older woman at the far end took off her glasses.

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