The Bride Changed. The Bill Didn't. novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Planner of Record
"Tell your mother no," I said to Dalton.
He looked at the phone in his hand and did not put it to his ear.
"She'll put the money in your account anyway."
"Then she can watch me send it back."
"Mara, it's your six hundred thousand."
"It's my father's life insurance. I want it with an apology and a judge's signature, not as a bribe in a parking lot."
Dalton opened his mouth.
Then he looked at Kelsey, standing behind me with her bag, and at the three crewmen, and at the neighbors on their stoops.
"I can't," he said. "I can't go back to her and say that."
"Then don't go back."
He didn't answer.
He turned and walked down the block on foot, with his hands in his pockets.
I watched him go and felt nothing at all, and that was the first good thing I had felt about him in a week.
At noon, the money arrived.
Cal's lawyer called me before I had finished looking at my banking app.
"Do not touch it," he said from Rome. "She has sent it with the memo 'Gift, final settlement.' If you keep it, she says you accepted a gift and the loan is closed."
"Can I send it back?"
"Today, through the bank, with a written refusal. Say it is not a settlement."
I did it at my kitchen table.
I typed the refusal myself, with Cal reading over my shoulder and not saying a word.
When the wire left my account, I sat back.
"Six hundred thousand dollars," I said, "and I just sent it back."
"You sent it back to the person who offered it."
"That sounds less impressive."
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