A Slight Smile Is Very Charming on a Stone Face novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: A Real Dinner
Forty names were pinned to the corkboard in the break room, in Bressler's neat capitals.
Joan stood in front of it with her glasses on her nose and a pen in her fist.
"I know thirty-eight of them by heart," she said. "You know the rest."
I read down the list.
A roofer from Lakewood whose hail claim I had cut by half.
A woman from Slavic Village whose jewelry had never been insured for what she thought.
A man in Garfield Heights who had shouted at me for twelve minutes.
Every name was a person I had said no to, in my flat voice, across a kitchen table.
"He thinks they hate you," Joan said.
"Don't they?"
"Some. But he didn't read the files, Lin. He read the denial codes."
She tapped the board with her pen.
"Nobody gets denied by you without a letter in your own words. I've seen them. Four paragraphs, each one kinder than the last."
I stood very still in front of forty names.
My stomach had not warmed up yet, but it had stopped dropping.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of A Slight Smile Is Very Charming on a Stone Face are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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