Watching My Fake Sister Dig Her Own Grave novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: The Call

I held up one finger to the room.

The woman with the reading glasses saw my face and stopped talking mid-sentence.

The retired cop was already reaching for his cell.

He mouthed, Keep him on.

"I'm not coming home," I told Uncle.

"Sure you are. You always come home."

His voice was the same as ever.

He'd used that voice to tell me my legs would grow back.

"You got legs now," he said. "Real nice. My smart girl."

Across the room, the retired cop had Dez on speaker, turned low, and a marker in his hand.

He wrote on the whiteboard: 90 SEC MIN.

"How's the cough?" I said.

A pause.

"What cough?"

"The littlest one. Nessa says he coughs all night. You need to get him out of the damp or it goes to his chest."

"Nessa says a lot of things."

"You'll lose him," I said. "And then you'll lose his cup. Fourteen a day, eighty-four a week. That's a lot of money for a cough syrup you didn't buy."

He was quiet.

I could hear a TV behind him.

And under it, faint, a rumble and a thump, a rumble and a thump.

A machine turning over.

"You always were good with the money," Uncle said.

"You taught me."

"I did." He sounded almost proud. "Who's got my books now, huh? Nobody. Those little ones can't count past their fingers. I lost two hundred last week. Two hundred."

"Two hundred and sixty," I said. "If the Lake Street stairs were short again."

The retired cop looked up.

Dez's voice came out of the phone, tiny and urgent.

The cop wrote: 45 SEC. TOWER WEST.

"Come back and do the books," Uncle said. "That's all. Nobody touches you. Same as before."

"Same as before was a floor."

"You'll get a bed this time. Somebody's paying for a bed."

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