I Stripped to Keep My Boyfriend in School, and He Sold Me to the Man My Brother Died Owing novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: Pulla
I sat.
I did not decide to.
The chair was behind my knees, and then I was in it with my coat on and my hands in my lap, looking at my mother's face.
"You knew," I said.
"I guessed," Helmi said. "It's not the same."
"For two years."
"For two years minus a week."
She got up and took a second cup down from the shelf.
She poured coffee from the pot on the stove, set it in front of me, and sat down again and took her time with the cream.
"The week after the funeral I went to the church for the casket flowers," she said.
"The man from the funeral home was there. He said, 'Mrs. Aalto, the family has settled everything.'"
"The family?" I said.
"Tobias Reinholt. The burial, the stone, the church, the flowers. A man came to this door the next month with an envelope for the rent. He said it was from a friend of Matti's."
"You never told me," I said.
"You were doing three jobs, Iris."
"You didn't tell me the rent was paid."
"No," my mother said. "I told myself it was a kindness. And then I started thinking about the box."
I put my hands around the cup.
"He carried it himself," Helmi said. "A grown man, strong as a horse. He carried it up the aisle against his chest, and he did not lean."
"Lean?" I said.
"A man carries a heavy thing by shifting his weight against it," my mother said. "Tobias carried that box like a basket of eggs."
"It was rocks, Ma," I said.
She closed her eyes.
It was the first thing I had said that touched her.
"Rocks," she said. "From the beach, I suppose."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Stripped to Keep My Boyfriend in School, and He Sold Me to the Man My Brother Died Owing are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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