Dear Brother, You Loved Me Too Late novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: Blue Folder
On Tuesday night, at ten past nine, someone knocked on the diner's back door in a rhythm that was almost a code.
Three knocks, a pause, and two more.
Clover opened it a crack with the chain still on.
The housekeeper stood in the alley under the single yellow bulb, in a headscarf, holding a grocery bag against her chest.
"Quickly," she said.
They let her in and locked the door.
Dixon was already waiting in the storeroom, sitting on an overturned milk crate.
He had come straight from work, and the smell of the ambulance clung faintly to his jacket.
The housekeeper set the bag on a flour sack and took out a flat blue folder, soft at the corners.
It was no thicker than a magazine.
"Mr. Gerald is in Milwaukee until tomorrow noon," she said. "The safe combination is your mother's birthday. He has never once changed it."
"How did you get it out of the study?"
"He leaves the key to the study in the pocket of his gray coat. I have cleaned that coat for twenty years." She folded her hands. "I will put it back before he lands. You have until five in the morning."
Angie did not touch the folder yet.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "You could lose everything."
"I'll tell you after you read it," the housekeeper said. "I don't think I can say it first."
Clover pulled a stool over and sat down on one side of Angie, and Dixon came and crouched at the other.
Nobody spoke.
Angie opened the folder.
The first page was a hospital intake form, printed in thin old type.
Her mother's name was at the top.
Age 29. Gravida 1, para 0.
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