Chapter 8: The Transfers

Hank drove me back to his house with the envelope on my knees.

The airport had let us go.

Nobody had been charged, and nobody could decide who to charge.

Joanna and Dorian left through a side door with a lawyer on the phone.

On the sofa, I opened the envelope.

Under the county order was a stapled sheet of bank records.

Every month for five years, a transfer of four thousand dollars had gone from my brother's restaurant account to N. Brightman.

I stared down at the rows of transfers.

My mother had put it there herself.

She wanted me to see it.

"They're not even hiding it," Hank said, reading over my shoulder. "They want you angry at her."

"It's working."

Someone knocked on the front door.

It was ten past noon, and I knew who it was by the way the knock paused.

Hank looked at me and I nodded.

Leanne came in with her hair back in a knot and a gray cardigan buttoned to her chin.

She was holding the pharmacy bag again.

She saw the page in my hand, and stopped.

"Where did you get that?"

"Mom."

"Of course she did."

I stood up.

I was angrier than I had been in five years, and it felt good to stand in it.

"Five years of four thousand a month," I said. "Is that what my life was worth? Or was it a retainer, so you'd keep me quiet?"

She said nothing.

"You made me soup. You sat up with me. You held my head." My voice broke. "Was that on the clock?"

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