My Brother Gave Her My Place, So I Stopped Coming Home novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Back Room

Rhoda's back room had a sink, a space heater and half a dozen boxes of unsold mat board.

"It's yours," she said on Monday morning, with the key in her fist. "Rent is you stop apologising."

"Rhoda, I can't."

"Then pay me in coffee. Mine is terrible, so you'll be in debt forever."

I carried my drawing tube in, and my grandmother's brass lamp, and the Beacon model in a banker's box.

Kirk arrived at nine with a folding table on his shoulder.

He set it up against the wall, put down my plotter paper and said, "Client delivery."

"You're not allowed to be this useful."

"I'm billing you in dinners."

By noon I had a desk, a lamp, a kettle and a sign Rhoda had lettered in gold on a scrap of walnut.

It said only: M. KLINGENBERG, ARCHITECT.

I looked at it for a long time.

At two the bell rang over the shop door.

The hospital board chair stood there in her pearls, holding a leather portfolio.

"I'm told you have an address now," she said.

"Ma'am," I began.

"I came to sign for the new wing." She smiled.

I took the contract and my hands were not quite steady.

"It's with the firm," I said. "The firm has the commission."

"The hospital has the commission. I have the pen." She took one from her bag. "I read the contract on Sunday. It names the firm. It also names you as the architect of record."

"It does?"

"Your father put your name on everything for twenty years, dear. Nobody thought to take it off."

She signed, and put the pen in my hand.

Then the school district's facilities director came in with a box of donuts, and the hotelier from Covington came in with a roll of site plans, and the man who built half the east side came in last, in a flat cap, and sat down on a box of mat board.

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