Chapter 19: Called

Dalton's POV

The bank did not call it a default.

The man on the phone called it "a change in the collateral position."

He had said that sentence to a lot of men.

I stood on the courthouse stairs with my phone against my ear and heard him tell me I had until Friday.

Friday, to find four million dollars.

Forty percent of Pflueger Homes had just walked down the steps in her borrowed ivory dress, carrying my daughter.

I watched her go.

I watched Rask put his hand on her back, and I watched her not shake it off.

By two o'clock the superintendent from the Dublin site had called me three times.

At three, the concrete supplier said the next pour would be cash on delivery.

At four, a framing sub texted me a photo of an empty lot where his crew had stood that morning.

Under it he had written: *Sorry.*

Nobody wanted to be the last man on a payroll that was going down.

I drove home through traffic with the radio off.

The green door stood open when I got there.

The hall was full of suitcases.

Hailey stood at the foot of the stairs with the baby on her hip and her purse over her arm.

She was wearing the pink coat.

"What is this?" I said.

"I'm leaving."

"You're what?"

"Don't." She looked at me with no tears in her eyes at all.

"I've seen your phone. I've seen what Friday looks like. I won't stand in a house that's about to belong to the bank."

I stared at her.

I had never seen her face without the softness on it.

What was under it was smaller and harder than I would have believed.

"You said you loved me," I said.

"I did love you. I loved your truck and your house and the way people said your name."

She shrugged.

"I needed a man who could carry a baby and a mortgage. Jeremy couldn't. He rode a motorcycle and fixed boats."

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