Chapter 27: The Exit Door

Ken woke at three with the ring cold against his pillow and Jude's back warm against his chest.

He lay still for a while and listened to him breathe.

Then he eased out from under the arm and went across the hall to the blue guest room in his shorts.

The shortbread tin was on the shelf above the desk, where it had been since the first week.

He took it down and sat on the floor with it in his lap.

It was a red tin with a faded Scottish castle on the lid, and his grandmother had kept buttons in it until he was ten.

He opened it.

Inside were the envelopes, one for every payment, each dated in his own square handwriting.

Under them lay the note Jude had written the second day: I'd rather owe you than pay you.

He counted the envelopes, though he knew the number.

Twenty-two thousand dollars, and nothing missing.

He had never spent a cent of it.

For months he had told himself that was pride.

On the floor of the guest room at three in the morning, he knew it was not.

It was fear.

If he spent it, he would have taken the Parkers' money.

If he kept it, he could still hand every dollar back and walk out the front gate the same man who had walked in.

The tin had been his exit door.

And on Sunday he had stood at a table with the whole family looking at him, and he had not wanted a door at all.

He sat there, a little sick, and understood it.

The offer of the house at Millbrook had hurt for the same reason.

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