After He Gave My Wedding Away, I Built My Empire novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Payable on Demand

My father came to the loading bay on Monday morning, leaning on a cane I had never seen him use.

He stood inside the roll-up door and looked at the folding tables, the hot plates, and the rows of Ten Minutes jars.

"Dad," I said. "How did you get here?"

"The bus."

"You hate the bus."

"I hate a lot of things this week." He looked at me, and his eyes were wet. "Is there a chair in this place?"

Hattie dragged a crate over, and he lowered himself onto it.

"Your mother thinks I should keep quiet," he said. "I've done that for a year."

"Dad, what is it?"

He took a folded paper out of his jacket and held it out in a hand that shook.

It was two pages, stapled in one corner.

At the top it said: Promissory Note.

At the bottom it had his signature and the date from last spring.

"Rowena brought it to the house," he said. "Colin was with her. She said it was just a formality, so I could take the money without feeling like charity. I signed it at the kitchen table."

"Does Mom know?"

"She thinks it was a gift."

I read the first paragraph and then the second.

Payable on demand.

Eighty-one thousand dollars was printed in the second line, in the neat, flat type of a form.

Underneath that, in blue pen, someone had written a new balance: seventy-two thousand.

"She changed it," I said. "She wrote in the balance after the nine thousand."

"She wrote it in this morning." My father's chin trembled. "She sent a man to the house at eight. He gave me a letter. I'm to pay it all within thirty days."

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