Chapter 15: The Ledger

My mother's office sat above the furnace floor behind a glass window gone green with age.

I had slept on its couch for two nights with the heat of the brick coming up through the boards.

On Monday at noon Leontine climbed the iron stairs two at a time, carrying a grocery bag.

Rhodri was already in the corner chair, reading the pension reports I had asked him not to read.

"I come bearing a gift from your stepmother," Leontine said.

I stood up so fast the chair rolled.

"She was in the Granger Tower lobby at six this morning," Leontine said. "Pearls, a gray raincoat, a face like she'd been crying since Friday."

"She asked the guard for the tall woman in the blue dress."

"She gave me this."

She set the grocery bag on my mother's desk.

Inside was a green cloth ledger, thick as a dictionary.

"She said it was in your father's study safe. Chisolm left it there to remind him what he owed."

Leontine took a breath.

"And she said to tell you she is sorry about the stairs."

I put my hand over my mouth.

For six years that woman had stood at the top of the staircase in pearls and never come down.

On Friday she had come down, and now she had walked a ledger across the city in a grocery bag.

Rhodri was watching me.

He didn't say anything, and I loved him for it.

I opened the book.

The writing was small and slanted and perfectly neat.

Every line was dated, with an amount in the right margin and a pair of initials beside it.

A.M. and a number.

A.M., four thousand, a Tuesday in January.

"Those are my father's markers," I said. "Wells Street."

"Look at the left column," Leontine said.

I turned the book toward the window.

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