The Gold Digger's Ledger novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: What's Left

Honor looked at me for a long moment.

"I will not take your money," she said.

"It isn't yours," I said. "It's his. I'm holding it."

She turned her face away, and nobody at that table spoke again.

Gus took her arm, and I walked behind them to the Beaumonts' elevator.

She did not say a word on the way down.

At the curb she got into a hired car by herself and told the driver an address I didn't catch.

It was almost two in the morning when we got back to East 68th Street.

Gus went up to bed with his notebook under his arm, humming.

Tristan stood in the front hall with his jacket in his hand, staring at the stairs.

"We have thirty days," he said. "Then this house belongs to a bank."

"We have thirty thousand five hundred dollars in a grocery bag, and eight thousand more of mine in a bank envelope."

"We have you," he said. "I'm not sure that's a financial position."

"It's the best one in the building."

I climbed the stairs to the guest room and opened the door with the green ribbon key.

Then I stood in the doorway and did not close it.

He came up behind me and stopped on the threshold.

"I'll go if you want me to," he said.

"Come in."

"Miranda..."

"Term three," I said. "I say so, and I say come in."

He came in.

I shut the door and turned the lock from the inside, with both of us on the same side of it.

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