Chapter 18: The Proof

I knocked on the carriage house door at ten the next night, still in my scrubs.

I had not slept, and I had not gone home to change.

Rafe opened it in his shirtsleeves, with a pencil behind his ear.

He didn't say anything.

The kitchen table behind him held one thick folder, squared to the edge.

"I pulled them last night after you left," he said. "I wasn't going to bring them unless you asked."

"I'm asking."

He stepped aside.

I sat down and opened the folder.

The first page was a bank statement from the month the retainer began.

It showed one deposit of four thousand dollars, from an account in my father's name.

I turned the page.

Another deposit, and another.

Sixty of them, one for every month, and under each one the same line.

Withdrawals: none.

At the bottom of the last page was a balance of two hundred and forty thousand dollars and some interest.

There was no debit card, no transfer, not one cent spent.

Rafe stood across the table with his hands in his back pockets.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You don't have to."

"I do. I told you to go before you finished.

"I didn't want to see this, because I was scared it would be true."

I closed the folder.

"You kept a quarter of a million dollars of his in a drawer and mowed his lawn."

"I only mow it in summer."

I laughed, and it turned into something else halfway out.

He came around the table and crouched in front of my chair, so that his eyes were level with mine.

"Say the rest," I said. "I want the blunt version."

"All right." His voice was low. "He bought a man's mouth once a month.

"I used it to say 'She's well' so he'd leave you alone. He never bought me.

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