Chapter 7: The Second Wind

I did not sleep on Friday morning.

I came off shift at seven and drove to the dock with the sun in my eyes.

I set my phone on my father's kitchen table.

The three photographs were open side by side.

Gene read them standing up, with his glasses on the end of his nose.

Junie sat in her high chair behind him, smashing a banana with both hands.

"Heyward Holdings," he said at last.

"Ten million dollars, Daddy. His company, his signature, his name on the memo."

"And her name on the wall."

"Yes."

"Huh," my father said.

He took off the glasses and folded them.

"That's your whole answer?" I said. "Huh?"

"I'm thinking."

"Think faster, Daddy. I need to know whether to hate him."

"You can already hate him," Gene said. "I've been doing it since Sunday."

He tapped the check with one thick finger.

"What I want to know is why a man pays that kind of money and signs his own name to it."

"Because he loves her."

"Maybe," he said.

He turned the phone over and looked at the back of it.

"Dean Gadsden owed me forty thousand dollars."

I stared at him.

"What?"

"Twenty months ago. He came down on a Sunday and sat where you're sitting."

"What did he say?"

"That he had a bridge loan he couldn't float for a month or two."

"You never told me."

"He asked me not to. Said it would embarrass him in front of Colt."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Gave Her My Hospital Wing from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.