Four People, Four Tickets, They Treated Me Like a Shadow, So I Left Them Behind novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Spare Room
Dot lived above the old diner on Rice Street.
She had sold the business to her cook four years ago and kept the apartment.
It had crooked stairs and a smell of coffee that never went away.
She met me at the top of the steps with her reading glasses pushed up into her gray curls.
She didn't ask me anything. She took the duffel out of my hand and pulled me inside.
"Soup," she said. "Then talk."
The spare room was at the back, with a quilt on the bed and a lamp already switched on.
On the dresser stood a framed photograph of my father holding up a fish.
"I put that out this morning," Dot said. "After you called. Don't cry again, you'll ruin the soup."
I ate two bowls at her kitchen table, and she watched me with her arms folded.
Then she got up and went to the hall closet and came back with a shoebox.
She set it in front of me.
"The bank," she said. "They've been sending these to me for a year."
The box was full of envelopes. All of them were addressed to me, in care of Dot, with a red stamp on the front.
Dot Svensson had never opened one.
"Why are they coming to you?" I asked.
"Your father put me down as your emergency contact when you were eighteen. Remember?"
"I remember. I thought it didn't count anymore."
"It counts to the bank." She tapped the lid. "They can't reach you at the house, honey. Every one of those says the same thing. *Unable to reach the primary account holder.*"
I opened the top envelope with my thumb.
It was a form letter. It asked for my signature to complete an annual review and gave a number to call.
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