Chapter 17: Eighty

"Eighty dollars," I said.

The table was silent.

"You've heard it already," I said. "Most of you heard it from the TV. So I won't play it again. I'd like to know something else."

I turned to the aunt on my right.

"If it was eighty, where did the rest go?"

"It went to the household," Mom said, from the foot of the table. "Cadence's expenses were absorbed. Her clothes, her phone, her classes."

"My clothes came from a consignment shop."

"The etiquette studios..."

"Cost me three buses a day, and I paid the fares out of the eighty."

"You are being very ungenerous," Mom said, and her voice shook, but only a little.

"I have something that says otherwise."

I reached under my chair for my bag and took out a green cardboard folder.

Luka had told me to carry it, and he'd told me to keep my face easy when I did.

The first page was the Receipt and Release she had carried to Luka's lobby at seven in the morning.

I walked to the nearest aunt and put it in her hands.

"This is the paper Mom wanted me to sign when she gave me twenty-four thousand dollars. Read the second paragraph."

The aunt read it aloud, slowly.

"The undersigned acknowledges receipt of full payment of all sums owed by the Thayer family for the period of..." She stopped. "Joan. Sums owed?"

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