Desperate Housewife? No, I'm Billion-Dollar Revenge novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Every Dollar

We sat in the Hawthorne's tea room, in front of the tall windows, with a pot of tea nobody poured.

Rafe sat one table over with his back to the wall.

The nanny had taken Hazel upstairs.

Phyllis laid the spiral notebook on the cloth between us and kept two fingers on its cover.

"I'm not selling my silence," she said. "I'm selling a book. I want you to understand the difference."

"What's the price?"

"Dean owes me."

"For what?"

"For everything." She opened the notebook to a page marked with a paper clip. "Since the day he was born."

She turned it around so I could read it.

The pages were ruled in ink, each line dated, each amount carried to the right.

Baptism gown, $22.40.

Braces, four years, $4,800.

First car, $9,400, "in his name, on the condition he'd call on Sundays."

At the bottom, boxed twice, was a total.

"Two hundred twelve thousand, four hundred eighty-six dollars and seventeen cents," Phyllis said. "He'll never pay it. He's never paid for anything. You will."

I looked at her.

Her chin was up and her eyes were wet.

She was sixty-one years old.

She had written down every dollar she ever spent on her son so someone would be made to see it.

She had the nerve to ask me to be that someone.

"Read me the total again," I said.

She did.

"All right," I said.

Rafe's head turned.

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