The Eight Year Ledger novel · Chapter 19 of 32
Chapter 19: Bake Sale
I turned the pages slowly.
One check a month, on the first.
One thousand dollars each time. Memo: Consulting.
Thirty-six of them, three years running, then the register ran out.
"He told me his cousin was doing his marketing," his mother said. "Billboards. Something with the internet."
"Did you ever see a billboard?"
"I saw the cousin buy a jet ski."
I got my own ledger from the den, the one for that year.
Every month I'd written down what Todd said the agency cleared.
Every month it was a thousand dollars less than it should have been, and he'd said business was slow.
I'd believed him. I'd written "slow" in the margin twice.
"He's been sending that boy money for years," his mother said. "Your money, too."
"Our money."
"And now the children's."
She buttoned her coat.
At the door, she stopped.
"You'll give that book to whoever needs it," she said.
"Are you sure?"
"I was a nurse thirty-five years," she said. "You don't fix anything by covering the wound."
I drove the register to my lawyer's office the day after Christmas.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Eight Year Ledger are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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