My Stepfather Sold Me at the Card Table, and the Man Who Won Me Never Looked My Way novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: The Pintler Road
Cormick's POV
For three days I ate nothing, and on the third Enid put a spoon in my hand.
I was in the pawn yard office at six in the morning with the lights off, because the lamp hurt, and a ledger open that I was not reading.
She stood in the doorway with a bowl of oatmeal and her glasses on their chain.
"Eat," she said.
"I'm not hungry."
"I raised you from nine years old," Enid said. "I know the difference between hungry and ashamed."
She set the bowl on the desk and sat down opposite me with her coat still on.
I ate three mouthfuls to please her.
It tasted of nothing.
"I'll say it once," Enid said. "You kept the peace for a dead man and called it loyalty."
I put down the spoon.
"He asked it of me."
"He asked it of a boy of twenty-nine who'd never been told no by anyone he loved," Enid said. "You were thirty-one when he died, and thirty-two, and thirty-five. Who was asking then?"
I had no answer.
"The girl said a hard thing in my kitchen. She said the crew you hold ran it."
"She did."
"She's right. You stood there and let her say it, and that was the first honest thing you've done in nine years." Enid stood. "Now do the second."
"What's the second?"
"Find somebody who'll say it in front of the hill."
I sat looking at the ledger.
My oldest friend had poured my coffee for thirty years.
The one person I could ask for proof of what he'd done would not let me in her door.
"There was a driver," Enid said. "On the old route. He ran the lay-away boxes out to the camps past Pintler. The old man's wife used to say he saw more than he was paid for."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Stepfather Sold Me at the Card Table, and the Man Who Won Me Never Looked My Way are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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