He Paid a Million for One Night, and the Contract Was Signed by My Mother novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Ten Lines in Twelve Seconds

On Monday morning I sat at my machine in the Ascension Parish courthouse with my back straight and my hands in my lap, and the whole building looked at me.

You can feel eyes on a court reporter's back.

I have felt them for six years, from lawyers who forget I'm there and witnesses who remember.

This was different.

This was a hundred people who had heard by Wednesday that Margo Landry sold herself to the Barge King for a million dollars.

The deputy at the door said it first.

He was a heavy, kind man who had once carried my machine up the steps in the rain.

"Morning, Margo," he said.

Then, quieter, with his eyes on the floor, he said, "The river's saying you were bought."

"I know what the river's saying," I said.

"I don't say it," he said.

"I know you don't."

He rubbed his neck.

"Then hear this," I said. "Nobody bought me, and I'm still at my desk."

I went in and set up the machine.

The judge came in and the room stood.

The bailiff called the first case, a boundary dispute between two cane families.

I took it down.

My fingers moved on the keys.

The words came in through my ears and out through my hands, and I didn't think about any of them.

That is the part of the work that is a mercy.

For forty minutes I wasn't a girl anyone had bought.

I was a pair of hands.

Cormac Verlander sat in the back row of the gallery.

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