My Stepfather Sold Me at the Card Table, and the Man Who Won Me Never Looked My Way novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: First of the Month

Dermot sat at the kitchen table with a bag of frozen peas on his eye, and I stood across from him with my arms folded.

Enid had put a cup of tea in front of him.

He had not touched it.

Cormick stood at the window with his back to the room.

He had not said a word since Dermot's last sentence on the porch.

I could see his reflection in the glass, the white line of his jaw.

"Say it again," I said. "All of it."

"I owed the crew nineteen thousand." Dermot moved the peas. "You were there. That was settled, Maevie, with the bond. You've been fed and housed. It was nothing, a paper."

"Go on."

"Then Bram came to the house last night. Said the crew had sold him my note on the quiet. Cormick's not in on it."

He glanced at the window and flinched.

"It's all above board. A man's allowed to buy a note."

"And he sent his boys," I said.

"They wanted me to understand."

"Understand what?"

"That he can call it any day." Dermot's good eye filled. "He said the bond's soft. He said it'll be voided at the Settling, and when it's voided, I'm his again, and so's the house."

"My house," I said.

"Your mother's house." He said it as if the two things were the same.

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