He Let Me Crash on Christmas Eve, So I Took Our Daughter novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Debt

Nate came to the NICU lounge on Monday with a cardboard box in his arms.

It was eleven in the morning.

I was in the vinyl chair by the window with a pump in my bag and a cold coffee in my hand.

Three other mothers sat around the room, and all of them looked up.

They had seen the video.

Everyone in Cincinnati had seen the video.

Nate set the box on the low table.

I saw a stapler, a framed photo of a job site, and the hard hat he'd worn for twelve years.

"He fired me at nine-fifteen," Nate said.

"I figured."

"Security walked me out. The foreman drove me over, because my truck belongs to the company." He rubbed his face. "That's the small part."

"What's the big part?"

"He called in the loan."

I put down the coffee.

"What loan?"

"I thought it was a gift." He sat on the very edge of a chair. "When Dad was dying, Mr. Pilkington paid the hospice. I was twenty. I signed a paper at the funeral home and never read it. It's a loan, Zanna. Two hundred and twelve thousand dollars with fourteen years of interest, due in thirty days."

One of the mothers whispered something to another.

"And he froze my shares in the partnership," Nate said. "My bonus, my retirement account. Everything I own has his name on the paperwork. I have four thousand and a hundred dollars in a checking account."

"Nate."

"I'm not asking for anything." He pulled an envelope out of his coat. "Here's the four thousand. I took it out this morning. It's for Joy, for the bill, for whatever she needs. I know it's nothing."

He held it out across the table.

I looked at his hand.

His ring finger had a pale band on it, and the ring was gone.

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