Fiancée's Betrayal, Dante's Inferno novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Yard

At nine on Monday morning my father's office smelled of fresh coffee and old paper.

The lender sat in Dad's chair with his folder open.

He had notarized three pages and set a fountain pen beside them.

Dixon stood by the window in the same suit he'd worn to the dock, shaved and gray in the face.

Fourteen people stood in the doorway and out into the hall.

Myra stood at my elbow, holding a cashier's check she hadn't been allowed to read.

"A hundred eighty-six thousand, four hundred," the lender said.

I took the check from her and laid it on the desk.

It was every dollar I'd saved in fourteen months, and the down payment on the boat I'd promised Brynn in a letter.

I looked at it for a second and felt nothing but relief.

"That's it?" Dixon said. "You just write a check?"

"It took me eleven years."

"Sign the page, Dixon," I said.

He picked up the pen.

His hand shook, and he held it with the other one.

"Dad liked you better," he said again, quietly.

"Dad liked you fine. He wrote me that you couldn't stand to come second."

He looked up fast.

"He wrote you?"

"Three years ago. Mom hid it."

My brother stood with the pen over the page.

For one second I saw the boy who used to carry me on his shoulders down this dock.

Then I saw the one who had changed my locks, and he signed.

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