The Nice Girl Gets Even novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Repair

I looked at the check.

I looked at him.

Upstairs, somebody laughed, and Gussie's spoon clanged on the gumbo pot.

"Everybody's here," I said. "If you want to talk, you can talk in front of them."

He nodded.

He'd known I would say that.

I think he'd practiced for it in the car.

Tuesday class was in my front room upstairs, on the sofa and the floor, with gumbo bowls on their knees.

The tenants had gone home at dusk.

Emmett was in the kitchen doorway with a dish towel over his shoulder.

When Truett came up the stairs behind me, everybody stopped eating.

The shrimper set his bowl down.

Truett stood in the middle of the rug in his beige suit.

He didn't look at his shoes this time.

"I came to apologize," he said. "To Posey. And to everybody here, because you were all there for some of it."

Nobody helped him.

He didn't wait for anybody to.

"Miss Gussie," he said. "I never said I was sorry about the curb. I'm sorry, ma'am."

Gussie looked at him over her glasses for a long time.

"It was two hours and ten minutes," she said.

"Two hours and ten minutes. I'm sorry."

He turned to me.

"I told you to be nice for three years," he said. "I'm done asking that of you."

His voice cracked, but he kept going.

"And I stood there on that porch and let her call you a liar."

He looked at the kitchen doorway.

"Your lawyer had to say it for me."

He turned to Emmett.

"I'm sorry for that too. You shouldn't have had to."

Emmett said nothing.

But he nodded, once.

"I'm going to the auditors on Monday," Truett said. "With my own lawyer, not Mama's. I'll tell them what I signed."

He held out the envelope again.

"That's for the co-op. It's not to get anything back. I just don't want my family's name on your rent anymore."

I took the envelope.

"The co-op thanks you," I said. "It'll pay down the banker."

"Okay."

"I'm not taking you back, Truett."

"I know." He almost smiled. "I didn't come for that."

He turned to go.

Then he stopped at the top of the stairs.

"Miss Gussie," he said. "How much is Tuesday class?"

Gussie set down her spoon.

"Forty dollars."

"Do you teach people how to apologize?"

"Every spring," I said. "Grown folks are the worst at it."

He took two twenties out of his wallet and held them out to Gussie.

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