Chapter 7: The Receipt

Lyle held his engagement dinner at the Prospect Club on a Saturday night, and the invitation was still on my phone.

It had been sent to every employee of Carrow Group.

Nobody had thought to take me off the list.

Celia knew my grandfather had left me something, and I had never told her. I had told Hannah so in the car, and neither of us had an answer yet.

"We don't have to go," Hannah said.

She stood in her bedroom doorway in a black dress with her glasses off, which was a version of her I hadn't seen.

I stared for two full seconds.

"That's a nine," I said.

"Pain scale, Tobias."

"Still."

She looked pleased and pretended not to be.

I was in the suit I'd worn to my grandfather's funeral, loose now at the waist.

By then I was down to one cane.

"I want to go," I said. "I want everyone who watched Lyle fire me to watch me walk in."

"All right," she said. "I'll drive. And I'm eating the cake."

The dining room at the club had white tablecloths, low candles and about eighty guests.

I knew most of them.

Bankers, shipping clients, my grandfather's old golf partners.

A hush began at the door and moved ahead of us to the head table.

Lyle stood at the head table in a navy suit with a glass in his hand.

Marissa sat beside him in a green dress.

She had a ring on her left hand.

I saw it from across the room, and I knew it from the cut.

It was the ring I had paid off in March, one payment a month for a year and a half.

It was the ring I had left on a breakfast tray.

Lyle must have gone back for it.

He lifted his glass as I came down the aisle on my cane, with Hannah a step behind me.

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