My Stepfather Lost Me in a Poker Game, Then I Cleaned Him Out novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Waiting Room

Russ wheels Aimee's mother into the bail office to show he owns her, a deputy sends her home with him, and Andre lays down a deposit slip: $20,000 paid into an account in Aimee's name after the April game.

I ran down Andre's stairs barefoot and came out behind the counter.

The waiting room was brighter than daylight.

A young man in a fry cook's shirt was asleep across three plastic chairs.

A sheriff's deputy stood at the counter with a stack of paperwork, waiting for Andre.

And in the middle of the tile, my mother sat in her nightgown with her hair in her face.

"There she is," Russ said. "Say hey to your mama, sugar."

I went around the counter and knelt in front of her chair.

Her feet were ice cold.

I pulled off my father's hoodie and wrapped it around them, and she looked down at it and started to cry without any sound.

"She's been asking for you," Russ told the deputy. "Well. Making noise."

"How did you get her down the stairs?" I said.

"I carried her, same as always." He smiled. "I can carry her anywhere I want."

Andre came down behind me in his boots and jeans, no shirt, and stopped at the end of the counter.

"It's two in the morning, Russ."

"Business doesn't sleep. That's on your sign."

Russ hooked his thumbs in his belt.

"Here's my business. I want to borrow her back Saturday night. Fifty thousand off what I owe you, for one night."

"Borrow who?" the deputy asked, not looking up from his clipboard.

"My stepdaughter. She deals my game." Russ winked at him. "I've got a gentleman flying in from Houston, and he asked for her special."

The fry cook had woken up.

He lay very still on the chairs with his eyes open.

"She's the only thing at my table anybody wants," Russ said. "I'm not asking for the merchandise for keeps, Andre. Just Saturday."

Mama's good hand found mine on the armrest.

She squeezed it three times.

Then her sleeve slid back, and I saw her wrist.

There were four purple marks on the inside of it, in a row, the size of a man's fingers.

I stood up.

"Look at her arm," I said to the deputy. "Look at it."

He looked, because I was loud.

"He leaves her alone upstairs every Saturday night with the door shut," I said. "He grabs her hard enough to do that."

"He brought her here in her nightgown with no shoes on, in October."

"She bruises like a peach," Russ said. "Doctor says it's the blood thinner."

"She doesn't take a blood thinner."

"You'd know, would you? You haven't been home since this morning."

He turned to the deputy and sighed.

"Officer, she ran off with this man for money. Now she wants to tell me how to care for my own wife."

"I didn't run off. You bet me in a card game."

The deputy finally put his pen down.

"Ma'am," he said. "Sir. Whose patient is she?"

Russ already had the paper out.

He unfolded the power of attorney on the counter and smoothed it flat with both hands.

"Her husband's," he said. "And her attorney in fact, for medical and everything else."

The deputy read it.

He read it slowly, all the way to the signatures, and I watched his face give up.

"Ma'am, he's got the paper," he said to me. "She goes with him."

"She doesn't want to go with him."

"Then you call Adult Protective Services in the morning. Tonight she goes home with her husband."

I took hold of the handles of her chair.

"She's staying with me."

"Aimee," Andre said quietly.

That was all he said.

He didn't move to help me.

Russ came around the chair and put his hand over mine on the handle.

His palm was warm and dry, and he pressed down until my knuckles ground together.

"Let go, sugar," he said. "Or I let go of her at the top of the steps tonight. Accidents happen at our house."

He said it so softly that only I heard.

I let go.

He wheeled her backward toward the door, and her eyes stayed on me the whole way.

My father's hoodie was still around her feet.

At the door Russ turned.

"Fifty thousand, Andre. Think about it."

"No," Andre said.

"Sixty."

"Not for sixty. Not for the whole three-eighty."

Russ laughed.

"Then ask her about her cut," he said. "Ask her what she got out of April."

The bell rang, and he was gone with my mother into the dark.

The deputy cleared his throat, signed his papers and left without looking at either of us.

The fry cook pretended to go back to sleep.

I stood in the middle of the tile with my arms around myself in a thin t-shirt.

Andre went into the back without a word.

I heard a file drawer open and shut.

When he came back he laid a single sheet on the counter in front of me.

It was a deposit receipt from a bank on Pass Road.

Twenty thousand dollars, paid in cash, on April 13th.

That was the Sunday after the April game.

The account holder's name was printed in capital letters across the top.

AIMEE R. FAYARD.

"He showed me that in April," Andre said. "He said you get a cut every time you sit pretty in his pot."

He crossed his arms over his bare chest and looked at me.

"So, sweetheart," he said. "Was there a cut?"

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