They Threw Us in the Snow. I Owned Everything. novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Bear in the Box

The lake behind the gatehouse had frozen in a gray sheet, with a wooden pier sticking out into it.

Tobias was sitting at the end of the pier with his boots over the edge and two paper cups beside him.

I walked out over the snow with my hands in my coat.

He didn't turn around.

"I have the wrong cup for you," he said. "It's black. You take cream."

"I'll live."

I sat down beside him and took it.

The coffee was too hot, and the air was so cold that it made my teeth ache.

"I left before you woke up because I wasn't sure what I'd say," Tobias said.

"You left a note."

"It was a short note."

"It was one line."

His mouth twitched.

"I'm going to tell you what Margaret meant," he said. "And then you can decide what you want to do with me."

I held the cup in both hands and waited.

"My father died eight years ago in February," he said. "Four months before your wedding. I was thirty, and I'd worked in the company since I was nineteen."

"I know. Colin told me."

"What Colin told you was that I stole four hundred thousand dollars from the company's account."

"Yes."

"I didn't." He said it flatly, to the ice. "I had never seen that account. Margaret said the bank had a transfer to a company in my name, and the board believed her, and I couldn't prove it wasn't mine."

"Did you try?"

"For four months. Then I stopped, because everyone I'd grown up around had decided." He put his cup down. "I had one friend who didn't. I came to your wedding because of her."

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