His New Stepsister. His Biggest Threat. novel · Chapter 15 of 32
Chapter 15: The Photo
"Good morning, baby," my mother said.
She lowered the phone and checked the screen and smiled at what she saw.
"You look happy," she said. "That's nice. I don't think I've ever seen you look happy in a photo."
"How long have you been standing here?"
"Since five. Hal called me from the car at midnight. He was very upset." She tucked the phone into her wrap. "He said, she's on the boat. So I came to the boat."
"You drove to Long Beach at five in the morning to take my picture."
"I drove to Long Beach to save this family."
She came down the dock toward me in little careful steps, because of the boards and her heels.
I stood there in yesterday's T-shirt with my shoes in my hand.
At the end of the next pier three old men were fishing with buckets and folding chairs.
They'd stopped fishing.
"Here's how this goes," my mother said. "There's going to be another envelope. Before the twentieth. You open it. You read it. You win."
"Hal bet against his son and lost three hundred thousand. Now he wants me to win?"
"Hal believes in you."
"Hal bet on me."
She didn't deny it.
She just smiled.
"Every dollar he can find," she said quietly. "On you. So yes, baby. He believes in you very much."
"Where does a broke man find dollars?"
"That's grown-up business."
"I'm twenty-four."
"You're a child who lives over a bar." She held up the phone again, screen out, so I could see myself.
There I was. Coming down the gangway, hair wild, shoes in my hand, grinning.
"Section nine," she said. "I read it too. If this photo reaches the show, Gannon loses every dollar he's won. Your little bar goes to the man with the bulldozer. And you go back to pouring beer until you're my age."
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