Chapter 9: The Statements

Hallie read the statements twice at my kitchen table on Friday morning.

She had her coffee in one hand and a pen in the other, and she underlined as she went.

I watched her from the stove.

She was frowning at the second card, the one with the vendor that kept coming back.

"Larkspur Linen & Supply," she said.

"I've never heard of it."

"No." She tapped the page with the pen. "Twenty-four hundred, every three weeks. The amount never changes."

"Is that bad?"

"It's too neat." She didn't look up. "A person buying real linen gets a different number every time."

"How do you know that?"

"I read invoices for a living."

She said it lightly.

Her fingers, though, had gone very still on the pen.

"You're angry," I said.

"I'm furious."

"For me."

She finally looked up at me, and for a moment I thought she was going to say something else.

"For you," she said. "Obviously for you."

She gathered the pages into a neat stack, squared the edges and put them in her bag.

"I'll copy these and bring them back. Don't call Brynn. Don't answer her."

"I wasn't going to."

"I mean it, Miles."

She kissed me hard on the way out.

My phone rang at noon while I was putting a retired welder's shoulder through its range of motion.

I let it ring twice, then glanced at the screen.

Mom.

I stepped out into the hall and picked it up, and my mother's voice came down the line shaking with fury.

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