For Our 10th Anniversary, My Husband Gave Me a Green Dress and My Sister a Baby novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Second Folder

Abel's office was a converted loading bay at the back of the warehouse, with a desk made from a door.

At five o'clock the installers had gone home and the building smelled of sawdust and cold coffee.

He was already on his knees in front of a green steel safe in the corner.

"Sit," he said, without turning around.

I sat on a stack of tile boxes.

The safe opened with a clunk, and he took out a manila folder gone soft at the corners.

He put it into my hands.

My own signature looked back up at me, ten years younger and a little proud.

Phoebe Colter lends. Repayable on demand.

Under it, in a square blocky hand, Abel Sorensen, witness.

"Thank you," I said. I meant it more than I could say.

"I should have handed you this a year ago."

"Why didn't you?"

He sat down on the edge of the door-desk and rubbed his jaw.

"Because you never asked, and because I thought it wasn't mine to bring up."

"It's your forty percent that just got more expensive," I said. "If I'm paid back, the company can't make payroll in January."

"Then we find a way to make payroll," Abel said. "You earned that money. It's not charity."

I looked around the room.

A calendar from a tile supplier hung on the wall, with one date circled in pencil.

A kettle sat on a filing cabinet, a mug with a chipped handle beside it, a single chair.

Everything about the office said a man who didn't ask anyone for anything.

"You've worked with my husband twelve years," I said. "You watched me do his books and eat lunch at my desk. You've known about this for a year, and you didn't tell me."

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