The Eight Year Ledger novel · Chapter 27 of 32
Chapter 27: Plea
The deposit was half. Two thousand one hundred and eighty dollars, due Monday the thirtieth.
The fund had a hundred and nineteen dollars and fifty cents less than that.
I sat in the empty boardroom and did the math four ways.
It came out the same every time.
Beau came back in from the parking lot to find me.
He looked at the quote over my shoulder.
Then he took out his checkbook.
"No," I said.
"It's a hundred and nineteen dollars."
"It's not your money. It's theirs to pay back."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he put the checkbook away.
"Fair," he said, exactly like Dottie.
My lawyer called me in the morning.
"Todd's lawyer asked for a change-of-plea hearing," she said. "Friday at ten."
"He's pleading?"
"His cousin pleaded last week. The cousin brought receipts."
On Friday the courtroom was on the fourth floor, and it was bigger than the family court.
It filled anyway.
Todd's mother sat in the first row behind the rail.
The room parent sat beside her, then the PTA president, then the dad in the Brookside Soccer jacket.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Eight Year Ledger are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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