Chapter 15: Fourteen Envelopes

Katie's POV

That night I opened the white envelopes.

Clark's sister had taken Poppy to her house for pizza and a sleepover, and Poppy had left with a stuffed rabbit and no backward look.

The apartment on Fourth Street was quiet.

I spread the fourteen envelopes across the counter and slit them one at a time with a butter knife.

Clark stood across from me and kept his hands in his pockets.

An hour before, he had taken the check from his shirt pocket and laid it by the salt.

"Dean wanted me gone by the weekend," he had said.

I had looked at the number for a long time.

"Two hundred thousand," I said.

"It's drawn on your account."

"And you kept it."

"I figured you'd want to see it."

I had not asked him why he refused.

I did not trust what I would hear myself ask.

The first twelve envelopes were the same.

Each was a quarterly statement from the yard's accountant, addressed to me, with a figure at the bottom.

Owner's distribution, it said.

Withheld by manager.

I added the figures on the back of an envelope, and the total made my hand stop.

"Clark."

"What?"

"Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. The accountant wrote to me every quarter, and nobody ever gave me the letters."

He nodded slowly.

"That's the money they didn't even put in the ledger as spent."

"And the eighteen forty was what they let me have of it."

The last two envelopes were from the bank, and they were thicker.

I read the first one standing.

It was a loan notice.

Constance, signing as manager, had borrowed three hundred and eighty thousand dollars against the yard's land two years ago.

The second letter was a notice of default.

The first payment had been missed in August.

The bank would call the whole loan on the first of December.

"That's why she wasn't afraid of the bank," I said. "She is the bank's problem. And I'm the owner."

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