Wash Her Feet novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: What Is Owed
Shelby went down in an ambulance that morning, holding Rafe's hand.
She asked to be admitted.
She said it quietly to the paramedic, with her eyes shut, and nobody argued.
I sat in the emergency room with my elbow stitched, and watched the doors swing closed behind her.
The doctor said she would stay at least a week.
Rafe stood in the hall afterward with his forehead against the wall tiles.
"She asked for me," he said. "Mouse. She said it back."
"I heard."
"I haven't heard her say it since I was fifteen."
I put my good hand on his back and kept it there.
That afternoon I sat at my father's kitchen table with the ledger open to the first page.
The lawyer who had called in tears came with a folder.
He was a tall old man in a brown suit, and he would not meet my eyes.
"Hallie, I can read you the statute," he said. "It ran out years ago. Nobody can sue the estate for the stairs. You don't owe a cent."
"I know."
"Then why..."
"Because I read the ledger," I said. "Because he wrote 'I should have paid them' on every page for seventeen years."
He rubbed his face.
"There were twenty-two apartments in that building," I said. "Somewhere there's a list of everyone who lived there. Find it."
"Hallie, that will take months."
"Then it will take months."
"The house alone is worth nearly two million."
"Then sell it," I said. "Lance's cousin has the listing. Let him keep it. I'll sign anything he wants, as long as every dollar goes in a trust for the families of that building and the Kessel children get theirs first."
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