Forbidden Guest House novel · Chapter 7 of 32
Chapter 7: The Offer
"What offer?" I said.
Leif came all the way into the kitchen and shut the door with his heel.
"Two hundred thousand dollars. A cashier's check by Friday."
"For what?"
"To go home to Duluth and burn the receipt. She said burn. She was very specific."
The bacon spat in the pan.
I turned it off.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
It was more than the inn cleared in two good years.
"She knows about the receipt," I said.
"She knew before I told anybody but you and Hedy. She knew the number on it."
"Then she knows it's real."
"Yes."
I picked up the pan and put it down again.
Something hot and ugly was coming up my throat, and it wasn't the bacon.
"So take it," I said.
He blinked.
"Take it. Seriously. Two hundred thousand for a piece of paper? You're a carpenter. You could buy a shop. You don't owe my grandmother anything. You never even met her."
"Kari."
"You've known me four days. I threw a ring in a glass in front of you. You don't have to stay and watch me lose my house."
He let me finish.
He always let me finish. I was starting to hate it.
"I said no," he said.
"When?"
"Last night. On the phone. Before she got to the end of the number."
I stood there with my hands in my apron pockets.
"Why?"
He looked at the window, at the end of the dock where the board was gone.
"My grandfather drove a 1977 Ford pickup until it fell apart. He wore the same boots for twenty years. He never went on a trip in his life." He paused. "He kept a card in his wallet for forty-five years. He didn't keep it so I could sell it to the woman who took his money."
He said it plain.
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