I Queued Three Hours for Her, But They Didn't Wait Three Minutes for Me novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: What He Owed
My great-uncle did not raise his voice.
"All of it," he said. "Say it so the room can hear."
My father's mouth worked.
He looked at the paper under the napkins on the sideboard.
"Twenty-eight thousand four hundred went to the lake," he said at last. "Five summers. The rest was the roof."
"Whose money?"
"My mother's."
"For whom?"
My father shut his eyes.
"For Bianca's school."
The aunts made the same small sound at the same moment.
My mother stood against the wall by the kitchen door and said nothing.
I had thought it would feel like winning.
It felt like watching my father get smaller.
"She asked," my father said, and it came out cracked. "Dani. She cried and said she'd die in that house without help. I thought Bianca would be fine. Bianca is always fine."
"Bianca is always fine," I said, "because nobody ever checked."
He looked at me then, really looked, for the first time in a year.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I knew in the kitchen. When you said January fourth." His face worked. "I knew, and I locked it away anyway, because I couldn't stand it."
My great-uncle crossed the room on his cane and lifted the paper from under the napkins.
He read the top page with his glasses on.
"Nineteen thousand against this house," he said. "You were going to sign it tonight."
"At seven, after the pie."
The old man tore it down the middle.
He tore it again, and again, and set the pieces on my father's plate.
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