After Faking My Death, I Refuse to Forgive Anyone novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Her Name Back
"Six years," said the judge, "the first four to serve."
Lindy swayed at the table, and a deputy took her arm.
I kept my eyes on the knot in the wood until I heard the side door open and close.
When I looked up she was gone, and I did not feel lighter or heavier, only done.
The following Monday Calvin laid a leather folder on my lap in his office in the mill.
"The trust is reinstated," he said. "Every dollar they touched has a lien on it."
"And the house?"
"Yours, free and clear. Neal's guarantee defaulted, and Marcella forfeited her share."
"All of it?"
"All of it. Your grandmother's account too, which I held in your name the whole time."
I opened the folder and saw my own name typed at the top of every page.
Gillian Underhill.
Not Weldon, not Coleman, not the word deceased.
My signature went at the bottom of the last sheet, and my hand did not shake.
"You should have your own pen for that," Calvin said. "Mine's leaking."
He had ink on his cuff again.
That afternoon I stood at the top of the cemetery hill in the August heat.
Two men in coveralls rocked my headstone off its base.
They slid it onto a hand truck, and the carved line TAKEN BY THE WATER went past me at hip height, gray and misspelled.
The caretaker held his cap in both hands.
"Where does it go?" I asked.
"The quarry, ma'am. They crush it for fill."
"Good."
The men tipped it into the bed of a pickup with a thump that I felt in my shoes.
Then they drove away, and there was only a square of flattened grass and a bare maple in the heat.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of After Faking My Death, I Refuse to Forgive Anyone are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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