Everyone Called Me His Girl, but He Said It Was Nothing novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: One Sentence

Adele spent the night on the fourth floor with an IV and a monitor, and by morning the doctors had ruled out the bleed.

It was a flare, they said, from two weeks without her medication.

I knew that without being told.

At nine her lawyer asked me to come to room 412.

I went because I wanted to see the paper.

Adele sat against three pillows in a hospital gown, with a pink bracelet on her wrist and no pearls.

She looked smaller and more furious than I had ever seen her.

Her lawyer, a thin man in a navy suit, had a document ready on the tray table.

"Ms. Dunning," he said.

"Mrs. Ames would like to express her gratitude with a gift."

I took the pages.

The sum was one hundred and forty thousand dollars.

The word beside it was gift.

Under the sum, in a paragraph of its own, I agreed to attend the Caregiver Dinner, to accept an award, and to make no statement that could embarrass the Foundation.

"Gift," I said.

"It's a standard word."

"It's the same word you used four years ago, at a conference table."

The lawyer cleared his throat.

Adele watched me and didn't blink.

I took a pen from my bag, drew a line through the word, and wrote above it: repayment.

Then I drew a line through the entire paragraph about statements.

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