They Sold Me for Five Million, So I Collected It Myself novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Founders Day
On the quad, Roland and Noreen demand five million from the Haverly family for eighteen years of raising Tamar, and Tamar answers by proposing to Orrin's grandson herself, until Roland blurts that the Haverlys already paid once.
My aunt read my invoice out loud in front of four hundred people.
"Eighteen years of rent, at four hundred a month," Noreen said into the stage microphone. "Food. Two sets of braces. A winter coat every other year."
She had stolen the microphone from a student volunteer.
She held her red ledger open in one hand.
It was Founders Day at Ashmont University, a Saturday in October, and the whole quad was out on folding chairs under the maple trees.
I was standing at the back in my dining-hall apron, holding a tray of paper cups.
My roommate took the tray out of my hands before I dropped it.
"Tamar," she whispered. "Is that Noreen?"
"Yes."
"Is that your invoice?" she asked.
"It's version nine."
On the stage behind my aunt, an old man sat very straight in a blue suit with his cane across his knees.
The banner over his head read THE HAVERLY SCHOLARSHIP, and below it, in smaller gold letters, a hundred thousand dollars a year.
He had been about to announce the winner.
Now the dean was hovering at the edge of the stage, and nobody dared take the microphone out of Noreen's hand.
My uncle Roland stood beside her in his good flannel shirt and his lake-house cap.
He was a big man, and he let his bulk do the talking.
"I raised that girl for eighteen years," he said. "Nobody paid me a dime to take her in."
That was a lie. I just didn't know yet how big.
"Mr. Haverly wrote me a letter in August," Roland went on. He pulled it from his shirt pocket and shook it open. "I'll read it, so nobody says I'm making it up."
He read it in the voice he used for the customers who argued about an estimate.
"The sum of five million dollars will be paid to you on the day Tamar Brubaker is married to my grandson. Signed, Orrin Haverly."
The quad made a sound I had never heard four hundred people make.
Phones came up in a ripple, row after row.
Noreen smiled at the crowd.
"We're not asking for charity," she said. "We're asking for what we're owed. A girl like that costs a family everything. And now she's twenty and she's moved out and she's holding us up. Tell them, honey."
She found me in the crowd with one sweep of her eyes.
Every head turned.
Four hundred people looked at an apron and a braid and a pair of drugstore reading glasses on a cord.
I had spent eighteen years learning to stand still when she did that.
I did the arithmetic instead.
Five million, divided by the ledger, was twenty-six times what I had cost.
The dean said, "Mrs. Brubaker, this is not the place."
Orrin Haverly lifted one hand without turning his head, and the dean stopped.
Orrin looked down the length of the quad and found me too.
He was seventy-six.
He was not a man who had ever been caught, and he was not surprised.
Something in the third row moved.
A tall young man in a navy rowing-club hoodie had put his hands on his knees and stood up.
Dane Haverly.
He sat two rows behind me in Statistics.
He had said perhaps ten words to me in six weeks, all of them about the homework, and every one had been careful.
He didn't look at the stage.
He looked at me.
I put the apron over the back of my roommate's chair.
"What are you doing?" my roommate Cleo said.
"Collecting."
I walked down the center aisle with the whole quad parting and the phones following me.
Roland said, "Tamar, sit down."
I climbed the stage steps and stopped in front of Orrin.
Up close he smelled of cedar and old paper.
"Mr. Haverly," I said, loud enough for the first six rows. "Does the letter say who the five million is paid to?"
Orrin's eyes didn't move off mine.
"It says on the day you are married to my grandson," he said.
"To whom."
A very small pause.
"It does not say," Orrin said. "I wrote it that way."
"Then it's the bride's," I said.
Roland took a step. "The hell it is. I raised her."
"I'm twenty," I said. "I'm the one getting married."
I turned around and found Dane Haverly in the third row.
He was standing very still.
Behind me my aunt said my name twice, in two different voices.
"Dane," I said.
The microphone stand was beside me, but I didn't need it.
"Marry me today."
Nobody breathed.
Dane Haverly said, "Yes."
He said it so fast that I hadn't finished closing my mouth.
It was not the sound of a surprised man.
It sounded as if he had been holding that word ready for a long time.
I filed it away.
Then Roland lost his temper, which I had been counting on.
He threw his cap on the stage.
"Five million, you little thief! You're not marrying anybody!"
"Mr. Haverly gets to give the money to anyone he likes," I said. "That's what the letter says."
"We already got that kind of deal from this man, Haverly. You can't pull it twice. You already paid us once!"
The quad went still.
Roland's mouth stayed open on the last word.
Noreen's hand closed on his sleeve.
And on the stage, Orrin Haverly's face emptied out all at once.
I wasn't sure which of us he was afraid of.
I only knew what that sentence meant to a girl who had been told for eighteen years that her parents left her nothing.
Somebody had paid for me once already.
I wanted to know what they had bought.
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