He Gave Me $18, So I Left Him with Nothing novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Declined

Katie's debit card is declined at a diner, Clark pays and she writes terms on a napkin, and Dean arrives with his mother and an officer.

The diner on River Street smelled of burnt coffee and syrup, and Poppy wanted pancakes shaped like a rabbit.

"Can you do a rabbit?" she asked the waitress.

"I can do two ears and a bad attitude," the waitress said, and wrote it down.

Clark had taken the booth by the door, with his back to the wall, and he kept his eyes on the street.

I sat across from him with my purse on my knees and the debit card in my hand.

It was the card Dean loaded every first Sunday, and he had loaded it that morning with eighteen dollars and forty cents.

I had meant to pay for the pancakes with it.

I gave it to the waitress when she came back with the coffee pot.

She swiped it, frowned and swiped it again.

"I'm sorry, hon. It says declined."

"That's not possible. There's eighteen dollars on it."

"Not anymore," she said, and slid it back across the table.

My phone buzzed against the vinyl.

It was the bank's app, and the balance on the screen read $0.00.

Dean had taken it back before the pot roast was cleared.

He had known exactly what I would do at that table, and he had spent the rest of dinner waiting for me to do it.

"I've got it," Clark said, and put a ten on the table.

"No."

I said it more sharply than I meant to, and Poppy looked up from her crayons.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I can't take your money. I don't know you."

"Fair enough," Clark said. "Then don't take it. Borrow it."

He pulled a paper napkin out of the dispenser and slid it across with a pen from his jacket pocket.

"Write down what you want, and I'll sign it."

I looked at him for a while.

Then I wrote, in capital letters, the way my father used to write on lumber.

One. Every dollar is paid back, to the cent.

Two. You never ask me why I stayed.

Three. We do not talk about the yard unless I bring it up first.

He read it twice.

"Is the third one about the yard on Water Street?"

"The third one is a rule," I said.

He signed it at the bottom, S. Holter, and slid it back.

"Your father would have told you to add a fourth," he said. "Pancakes first, arguments second."

The rabbit came out with one ear burnt black, and Poppy declared it was the best rabbit she had ever eaten.

I tore a corner off for her and my hands finally stopped shaking.

For one whole minute I forgot the house on Maple Street.

Then the bell over the door rang, and the diner went quiet.

Dean came in first, still wearing his blue church shirt, with his mother behind him.

A police officer came in after them, one hand on his belt.

"There she is," Dean said, to the room. "Officer, that's my wife. That's my daughter."

He did not look at Clark.

He looked at Poppy, and his voice went soft and wounded, and I saw four people at the counter turn to listen.

"She walked out of Sunday dinner with no coat, no car and no plan. She's not herself. And now she's sitting with a man none of us has ever met."

"He worked for my father," I said. "He's the one who fed us pancakes."

The officer's face was patient and tired.

"Ma'am, I'm only here because a family member called it in. Is the child safe?"

"She's eating a rabbit," I said.

"Is anyone threatening you?"

"My husband froze my bank account in the middle of a meal."

A woman at the counter made a small noise.

The officer turned to Dean.

"Sir, is there a custody order?"

"No," Dean said. "We never needed one."

"Then I can't take either of them anywhere. A mother has the same right to that child you have. If you want something different, you'll need a judge."

Constance had been standing very still beside the register.

She came forward now, in her good wool coat, with her pearl brooch pinned straight.

She did not look at me either.

She crouched to the height of the booth and held out both gloved hands.

"Poppy, sweetheart. Come to Grandma. We'll go home and have a bath and a bedtime story."

Poppy slid down in the seat until only her eyes showed over the table.

"No, thank you," she said.

"Poppy."

"I'm having pancakes with Mommy."

For a moment nobody in the diner moved.

Constance stood up slowly and brushed off her knees.

She looked at the napkin by my plate, and the ten under it, and the man across from me.

Then she smiled at me for the first time in six years, and it was not a kind smile.

"Then Mommy had better find her a bed by dark," she said.

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