The One Who Waited novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Thirty-Eight Thousand
I looked out the break room window.
A black car sat in the snow by the loading dock with its engine running.
The back window was down two inches.
"Tell him to come in," I said.
The lawyer smiled thinly.
"He'd prefer to keep this private."
"Then he should have sent a letter. Tell him to come in, or I'll walk out there with this envelope and forty people behind me."
The lawyer looked at the line.
The welder. The surfboard man. The lamp women. Six stagehands in snow boots, holding soup.
All of them were watching.
He went out.
A minute later the door opened and Derek came in, stamping snow off shoes that weren't made for it.
He looked thinner. He had a gray coat on over a sweater, no watch.
He saw the crew in the line and stopped.
"Can we do this upstairs?"
"No," I said. "It's lunch."
He came to the counter.
He looked at the chalkboard, at the gold-leaf MERRY'S over the door, at the oven from the witch show.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The One Who Waited are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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