Chapter 16: Brooke's Box

Jonas wanted to come.

I told him to park the car at the end of the block and keep the engine off.

"I'm not letting you walk into a garage at midnight alone," he said.

"I'm not alone. You'll be eighty yards away with the window down."

"Eighty is too far."

"Sixty."

He looked at me for a long time.

"Sixty," he said, like a man giving up a kidney.

The parking garage under the Hampton in the Loop smelled of oil and wet concrete.

Brooke stood beside a pillar on level two, in a gray hoodie I thought I recognised.

It was mine.

She had taken it from the laundry basket the night I left.

Her hair was pulled back in a rubber band.

She had no makeup on, and she looked about fourteen.

"You came," she said.

"You said you had something."

"I do."

She had a blue cloth-bound ledger held against her chest with both arms.

It was the kind that old women use for church accounts.

"Mom keeps it in the lining of her sewing basket," Brooke said. "Every dollar. Every month since you were nine."

"You said you were the one who keeps the receipts."

"I am." She swallowed. "I'm the one who always had to hand them over."

She held it out.

I took it.

It was heavier than it looked.

I opened it under a flickering fluorescent tube.

The handwriting was Marla's small, tidy hand.

The columns were ruled in red.

*Dec. Brooke, braces, $3,200. Dwight, truck payment, $890. Church, tithe, $900. Hair, $140.*

Down the right margin, in smaller letters, ran another column.

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