A Paper Plate at My Own Table novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: What I Paid For

"I know what the police call it," I said. "They call it evidence."

I held the bank slip up between two fingers.

Norma looked at it, and for a moment her face was only tired.

Then she set her purse down on the dresser and took off her gloves, one finger at a time.

"I kept this family alive," she said.

"You sold a house that belonged to your stepson."

"I sold a house that was falling down around a widow and two children. Frank's debts were real. The taxes were real."

"Frank left a will."

"Frank left a boy who wanted to hammer nails and wander off to Alaska." Her voice rose. "Who was going to run a household? Timothy? He was never family. He was Frank's first mistake, and I fed him for thirty years."

"You fed him on a paper plate."

"I fed him," Norma said. "That's more than most."

The stairs creaked.

Timothy stood in the bedroom door in his flannel, with his hair on end.

Kristen was behind him, white and silent.

He had heard it.

I could see it in the line of his jaw.

Norma saw him, too, and something in her settled and hardened.

"There he is," she said. "The help. Come to rob an old woman in her own bedroom."

"It's my father's bedroom," Timothy said.

"It's my room."

"It was his."

"Then take it. Take it, you ungrateful boy. Everything I did, I did so you'd have a roof, and you've brought a stranger into my house to..."

"Stop," Timothy said.

He didn't raise his voice.

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