The Men Who Walked Out novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: What the Money Bought

I read the whole page standing up, with the eggs going cold behind me.

The handwriting was a young man's, quick and slanted to the left.

Then I put the page in my coat and told Elliot I was going alone.

"Take the car," Dad said from the stove. He did not ask where.

The inn on Mount Auburn Street had a breakfast room with six tables and a woman reading the newspaper by the window.

Gordon sat at the farthest table with a cup of coffee he hadn't touched.

He stood when he saw me, and he looked as if he hadn't slept.

"You read it," he said.

"Sit down."

He sat.

I took the folded page out of my pocket and laid it on the cloth between us.

"My mother's father came to the apartment. Tell me what he said."

"He said he wasn't there to threaten me."

Gordon turned his cup a quarter turn.

"He sat on the only chair we owned and put a check on the table. Thirty thousand dollars."

"It was more money than I'd seen in my life."

"What did he want?"

"He said Rosalind had a future, and I was in the way of it. He said I could keep her in a garage the rest of her life, or I could take the check and a plane ticket and let her go on."

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