Owned by My Sinful Guardian novel · Chapter 8 of 32
Chapter 8: Dad's Hash
I stopped on the sidewalk and turned around.
"What Thorley is," I repeated.
"You know what he's going to say." Landry glanced back at the bar, at his friends watching through the window. "He was practicing it on the sales guys all afternoon yesterday."
"Then let him practice."
I walked the three blocks to the Bluebird with my hands in fists.
By the time I put the key in the lock, I'd stopped shaking and started counting.
On Monday morning I sat at the counter with a legal pad and my mother's adding machine.
Magnus's lawyer had sat with me for one hour that morning and slid one sheet across the table.
Three hundred and eighteen thousand dollars.
My parents' life insurance, grown for thirteen years, in an account with my name on it.
I'd never had more than nine hundred dollars at once in my life.
Gretchen came in at noon with two breakfast sandwiches and found me surrounded by numbers.
"Walk-in compressor," I said. "Hood cleaning. Health inspection. New gaskets. Paint. Two cooks and a server."
"Who's the two cooks?"
"Me and you."
She stopped chewing.
"You're serious."
"I'm reopening my dad's diner. With my own money. Not one dollar from anybody else."
"Not one dollar from a certain giant in a black truck, you mean."
"Not one dollar from anybody."
Gretchen put her sandwich down and looked around at the red stools, the dusty pie case, the January calendar.
"I've been cooking eggs for drunks on Carson Street for nine years," she said. "Nobody's ever once asked me to come home and eat."
"Is that a yes?"
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