Chapter 7: Guarantor

I waited until the elevator doors closed before I asked him.

"Lacey said to ask what you knew."

Malcolm stared at the floor numbers lighting up above the door.

"She'd say anything to put a wedge between us," he said. "I knew my brother wasn't good enough for you. I should have told you that a long time ago."

It was an answer, and it had the sound of one.

I looked at his profile, the beard and the set jaw, and I let it go.

Monday morning I walked into Brannigan Floor Supply with Poppy on one side of me and Malcolm a step behind.

The showroom was a long room full of laminate samples, with thirty desks along the back wall.

Everybody on the sales floor knew by now.

Conversations ended as I came through, and a printer kept running into the quiet.

Zack sat at his desk, in a blue shirt, with a bouquet of yellow roses propped in the trash can by his chair.

He saw me and stood up fast.

"Bridge. Thank God. I sent flowers."

"I saw them in the garbage."

"I can explain all of it."

"I only came for twenty-three thousand four hundred dollars," I said.

I said it at full volume, so that the desks at the back could hear me.

Zack glanced around and lowered his voice.

"Babe, not here."

"Here is where you work."

"It's an investment, okay? It was always going to be ours. I'll pay you back, with interest, as soon as the closing happens on Friday."

"What closing?"

The question came from the glass office at the end of the room.

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