When I Cut Off the Payments, My Mama's Boy Husband's Family Panicked novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Closing

Nobody touched the folder.

The owl lawyer opened it himself and turned it toward the owner.

"Five hundred and seventy-five thousand. Cash. We close today, right now, and we'll keep every teacher for a full year instead of ninety days."

The owner's lawyer leaned over to read it.

My closing officer looked at me.

I looked at the owner.

She was holding her WORLD'S OKAYEST BOSS mug in both hands. She'd brought it from the daycare.

She read the page for a long time.

Then she took off her reading glasses.

"Young man," she said. "What's the name of the boy in the fire truck shirt?"

The lawyer blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"In my toddler room. Fire truck shirt. Eats crackers. What's his name?"

"I don't..."

"She knows," the owner said, and nodded at me. "She knows what he eats. She knows which teacher sings. She got my roof fixed and my slide rebuilt before she owned a square foot of it."

She closed his folder and slid it back down the table to him.

"I've been looking at your owl on the billboards on 270 for two years. I'm sick of it."

Then she held out her hand to me.

"Pen, honey."

I gave her all three.

At 9:41 a.m., I owned Little Acorns.

The owner put a ring of keys in my palm and folded my fingers over it.

The green door key had a strip of masking tape on it that said FRONT.

"Postcards," she said. "From Arizona. Every one."

The divorce was final on a Tuesday in August.

It took barely ten minutes.

The judge asked Jeff if he understood the agreement, and Jeff said, "Yes, ma'am, I read every page," and she looked up at him like that was rare.

On the courthouse steps he held out his hand, and I shook it.

"Every other Friday," he said. "Five-thirty."

"I know."

He'd never once been late.

He showed up with sunscreen and a list of zoo animals Evie wanted to see, in order.

He showed up at Wednesday dinners with a plastic stegosaurus he'd bought her himself.

In July he brought me the last worksheet from his parenting class and asked me to check his answers.

He'd gotten them all right.

The paint was the last thing.

I needed four gallons of yellow for the toddler room, the soft kind.

I went to the hardware store on Route 3 on a Saturday morning with Evie in the cart.

At the paint counter, in an orange apron with a name tag, stood Ron.

He saw me and went still.

The gold watch was gone.

He wore a cheap black one on a rubber strap.

"Julie," he said.

"Ron."

"Grandpa!" Evie stood up in the cart. "Actually, why are you wearing a costume?"

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