Chapter 23: What Selena Owes

The officer took Selena down the steps by the elbow, politely, with her laminated sleeve in his other hand.

Four hundred people parted for them in complete silence.

At the car she turned her head.

"What do I owe you?" she asked me.

It was the only question she had ever asked me that wasn't a trap.

"I'm not keeping a tab on you," I said.

"That's worse."

"I know."

He put her in the back seat. He did it kindly, which I had not expected and did not mind.

When the car pulled away, the whole lawn started talking at once.

Dot was on her phone before the taillights were gone.

"Yes. Yes, on the stage. Yes, the gold star," she said. "I have eleven more to call, and I'm doing them alphabetically."

A woman in a navy blazer pushed through the crowd and stopped in front of Gus.

She was the chair of the school board.

She had a rolled paper tied with a ribbon, and she looked tired and sorry.

"Mr. Brannigan," she said. "We owe you an apology."

"Ma'am."

"The board met this afternoon, in the beer tent." She cleared her throat.

"We're replacing the plaque. Your name goes on the list for that year, and the scholarship is yours."

"All of it, with the interest."

Gus said nothing.

Dot had stopped dialing.

"I have something," she said. "I've had it ten years."

She opened her purse and took out an envelope gone limp from handling.

"It was in the till," Dot said. "Behind the twenties. I couldn't throw it out, and I couldn't give it to him."

Gus opened it.

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