Three, Two, One, I'm Gone novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Line Item

I carried the note across the room and said Wade's name once.

He woke at once and looked at my face before he looked at the paper.

"Read it," I said.

He read the note, then the check, then he looked at his grandmother, who had not left the doorway.

"I'm not going anywhere," Opal said. "Answer her."

"It's true," Wade said.

I had come ready for a denial.

"Tell me all of it," I said. "Start with how much."

"Sixteen hundred dollars a month, to his landlord, through my lawyer."

"Since when?"

"Six years. Grant had been thrown out of his third apartment and was sleeping in his car."

"And you couldn't call your brother."

"No." He rubbed the scar on his eyebrow. "A lawyer was easier than a phone call. I told myself a roof was enough."

"Did Grant know it was you?"

"The lawyer said it was a family trust. He never asked which family."

I sat down on the arm of the sofa, because the numbers had started to arrive.

"The apartment in Pittsburgh," I said. "The one I lived in for three years."

"That was his lease. Yes."

"He told me the rent was sixteen hundred dollars, and I paid him eight hundred of it on the first of every month."

Wade said nothing.

"Say it," I said.

"The landlord was paid in full, by me," he said. "Your eight hundred never went to him."

I did the sum out loud, because it was the only thing I could do.

"Thirty-six months. Twenty-eight thousand, eight hundred dollars."

"Delia."

"Don't. I'm not finished being angry, and I want you to sit there while I am."

He sat.

Opal lowered herself into the other chair and folded her hands on the head of her cane.

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