Chapter 5: Payroll

"How much?" I asked.

Dinah's father looked at the notice for a long moment before he answered.

"Three hundred and eighty thousand," he said. "By the twentieth."

"That's twelve days."

"I can count, Cora."

His voice was gentle.

He folded the paper in half and put it in his shirt pocket.

That night the storm came in off the water.

At ten o'clock the diner roof started leaking over the grill.

Dinah's father went up a ladder in the rain with a bucket and a staple gun.

I stood at the bottom holding the ladder with both hands and an umbrella wedged under my arm.

Headlights swung across the lot, and a truck door slammed.

Elias Haddon came around the corner of the building in a rain jacket with a blue tarp over his shoulder.

"Move," he said to me, and took the ladder.

"I've got it."

"You've got a coffee cup and an opinion. Let me."

He climbed up past Dinah's father and the two of them hauled the tarp over the roof, saying very little.

I stood at the bottom and watched his jacket turn dark with rain.

When they came down, Dinah's father clapped him on the shoulder and went inside to make soup.

That left the two of us under the awning, with water running off the eaves.

"You don't owe my family anything," I said.

"I know."

"So why are you here at ten at night with a tarp?"

"Because it was raining," Elias said.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I've got."

I laughed, and it came out shaky, and I had to put my hand on the ladder rail to steady myself.

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Took the Rags, I Took the Empire from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.