Chapter 14: The Casserole

Mal's POV

I woke up on Abram Castellan's couch with a cat on my chest and a note under my coffee mug.

Eat something. Back by nine. Stay.

I ate the toast he had left out, and I stayed for ten minutes.

Then I put my shoes on.

He came through the door at 8:50 with his keys in his fist and a face I had never seen on him.

"What happened?"

"Sit down."

"I don't sit down for bad news. I stand."

"Mal."

"Say it."

He told me about the check, and Diane under his father's photo, and the line she had left him with.

"She said to ask you what you did the summer you were nineteen."

I had known it would come.

I had known for eight years.

"I was charged with theft," I said. "Misdemeanor. It was dismissed."

He did not flinch.

"Tell me."

"The church fund was short six hundred dollars. My mother told the pastor she'd seen me near the cash box."

"Had you?"

"I'd been there for a flower sale. She took it herself, Abram. For Colt's braces, I think."

"You think."

"She cried at the pastor's desk until he called the police. Then she told me that if I paid it back, everyone would forget."

"So you paid six hundred dollars you never took."

"I paid it with a summer of waitressing."

He looked at the floor for a moment, and I saw his jaw work.

"And then?"

"The charge went away. She told Dad it was a prank gone wrong. She's called it that at every Christmas since."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You never asked."

It came out harder than I meant.

He took it without a word.

"I'm asking now."

"Now you know."

I picked up my bag.

"I need to go home and change. And I need to see Dad at noon."

"I'll drive you."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Out of Time: The Family That Lost Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.