Five Years Outside Their Photos, So I Finally Walked Out Forever novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Envelope

I took the left-hand stairs two at a time, and I didn't care who heard me.

The studio door was open.

Elias stood at the window with his back to me and his hands in his pockets.

"He told you," he said, without turning.

"He told me in front of a couple buying a boat."

"I'm sorry."

"Is it true?"

"It's true."

I'd expected a denial.

I'd built my whole walk across town on one, so I could be furious at a lie.

"You took twenty thousand dollars," I said.

"I took twenty thousand dollars."

"To leave me alone."

"To leave town." He turned around, and his face was gray. "I didn't know you'd been told anything. I thought he was paying me to stay out of my own family."

"And you took it."

"I was thirty. I had a student loan, a dead camera and a landlord who'd changed the lock on my studio."

He wasn't making excuses, only laying out facts in a row. "He told me, 'She's happy. Don't wreck it.' It was the first time in my life Gavin had asked me for something."

"And you thought, why not."

"I thought, she's happy. I wanted that to be true so badly I'd have taken a lot less."

He went to the shelf behind the long table and took down a coffee can.

The label said "Dill's Premium Bait Worms."

He set it down in front of me and pried off the lid.

Inside, folded in a rubber band, was a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

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