The Daughter They Abandoned Is the Doctor They Can't Reach novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Full Tuition

We photographed every page that night with the prepaid phone, front and back, twice.

Then Mabel drove Faye to the corner of her street in the green station wagon, and Faye walked the last block alone with the envelope taped shut again inside her sweater.

She put it back in the blue folder before anyone woke up.

I know because she texted me at six in the morning from a number I had given her on a scrap of receipt paper.

It said: Back in the drawer. He didn't hear me.

A week later, on a Friday, I was shelving cookbooks when Mabel's shop phone rang.

"Kroll's Books."

"Miss Sandvik." Dr. Holm's voice came down the line, brisk as ever. "I have your letter. Sit down."

"I'm standing behind a register."

"Then hold on to it."

I held on to it.

"Brightwater Pathways Scholarship, full tuition, four years, the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities," she said. "You start in the fall, in the honors pre-med track. You've been accepted by the committee, unanimously, and that includes the man who thought you needed to be more enthusiastic."

I could not make a sound.

"Miss Sandvik?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand what I said?"

"I think so. I think I'm going to cry on a cookbook."

"Move the cookbook," said Dr. Holm.

I moved it.

I was crying when Mabel came out of the back room with her glasses pushed into her hair.

"What is it?" she said.

I held up one hand and nodded, and Mabel put both of hers over her mouth.

"Do I get to mop?" I said into the phone, laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

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