Chapter 20: Paid in Full

Hattie's POV

"You walked here," Gus said.

"It's eight blocks."

"It's raining."

"I noticed. I'm wearing your coat. I'm not writing that down either."

He stood in the dock doorway with cedar chips in his hair and the stockroom light behind him.

The cot lay folded in the corner.

"Can I come in?" I asked.

"It's a loading dock."

"It's a door."

He stepped back.

I sat on a pallet of mulch. He sat on the other one, and we looked at each other across a stack of drain traps.

I held up the green notebook.

"I added it up," I said.

"Hatt."

"Let me do this the way I do things. It took four hours."

He shut his mouth.

"Every page since the curb. Your coffee, your oil change. The pot roast, which I said was meatloaf."

"It was meatloaf."

"The ladder. The hot dog. The pie, which I bought myself, so that's a wash."

"What did it come to?"

"Eleven hundred and four dollars and fifty cents."

"I never charged you for the hot dog."

"I know. That's why I put it in."

I opened to the last page.

"Then I added what I owe you for ten years ago. I used the checks. I used the scholarship."

"Hatt, you don't owe."

"I tried the tuition at the state school, and then the interest on the tuition. I got a number so big I had to turn the calculator sideways."

I closed the notebook.

"Here's what I found. At the bottom, I had a very large number, and I didn't want to pay it."

"Okay."

"I didn't want to wipe it out either. I looked at it, and I knew it wasn't why I came."

"Why did you come?"

"Nobody is nice for free," I said. "That's rule one. My father taught me."

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