The Missing Heir novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Pit

By the end of the second week, Micah worked in the dish pit of the hospital cafeteria.

The chaplain had talked the kitchen manager into it.

It paid eighteen dollars an hour in cash, with a hairnet, and the one-armed man in the apron was the happiest person in the building.

"I've found my calling," he told me, holding up a sheet pan.

"It's the only job where I can see progress."

"You have a cast on your arm."

"I wrap it in a bag.

The steam fogs the plastic, and I think about nothing at all.

It's wonderful."

He stayed with me at night.

Nobody had said it out loud.

His toothbrush stood next to mine and his six-dollar coat hung by the door.

Every evening he walked six blocks from the hospital and met me on the stoop with a bag of leftovers.

I should have been worried.

I was not, and that worried me more.

On Thursday I stopped at the cafeteria on my break.

I was leaning on the pass-through window, trading insults with him over the clatter.

The doors at the far end of the room swung open.

A group of men in good suits came in with the hospital's chief executive at the front.

The man in the charcoal suit was walking at his elbow.

I knew the rimless glasses.

I knew the crossed-oars pin on his lapel.

"...and this is our staff dining hall," the chief executive was saying.

"The Foundation's renovation fund was very generous."

"I'm glad to see it in use," said Dalton Everhart.

His voice was warm and even, and every vowel was polished.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Missing Heir from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.