My Tow Driver Found Me at 2 A.M., and Home Could Wait novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Office Chair
Carla's POV
He didn't answer me on the kitchen counter.
He took the brass key off its loop of string and put it on his own ring, between the shop key and the rollback key.
He looked at it for a long time.
He moved in on Tuesday with one duffel, a toolbox and a coffee can of change.
He kept the apartment key for the nights he had the county phone, and Orlin never asked for it back.
On Friday my first check landed in the account that had my name on it and nobody else's.
It was a thousand and ninety-five dollars, and I stood in the bank lot in Hillsboro and read the number twice.
On Sunday morning the first frost came.
The lot at the shop was white and stiff, and my boots crunched across it and left dark prints.
Orlin's pickup was gone.
The bay door was shut.
I found Levi in the office, in his grandfather's swivel chair behind the desk.
A stack of papers lay in front of him, with his father's old gray calculator on top.
He was in his undershirt, with a space heater clicking at his boots.
"What are those?" I said.
"Invoices."
"On a Sunday," I said.
"They're due."
"They've been due for two months."
He rubbed his eyes.
There were the fuel bills and the parts bills and a final notice from the county, in a drift across the blotter.
He'd put a coffee mug on the worst of them.
I walked around the desk.
I put both hands on the stack and swept it off.
It went over the edge in one sheet, onto the floor, and the mug went with it and rolled under the filing cabinet.
"Carla," he said.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Tow Driver Found Me at 2 A.M., and Home Could Wait are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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