Chapter 14: Three Percent

A hundred and fifty faces turned toward the alley.

Noah stepped into the dock light.

He didn't look at Damon at all.

He looked at me.

"It's true," he said. "Three percent. It's in my firm's contract with Halyard."

Somebody near the time clock swore softly.

Damon spread his hands, sorrowful, a man who'd only told the truth.

"Tomorrow," I said to Noah, before he could say anything else. "Seven o'clock. The roof. Bring a pen."

I walked out past Damon without looking at him, and I heard the dock start talking behind me.

At six-thirty on Sunday evening I climbed the iron stairs past the old water tank and pushed open the roof door.

The Bellweather's roof was tar and gravel and seagull feathers.

The big letters of the sign stood along the seaward edge, their bulbs dark.

The Gulf went on forever on the other side of them, going gold.

Noah was already there, sitting on an upturned crate with a folder on his knees.

He stood up.

"You're early," he said.

"So are you."

"I wanted the first word."

"You don't get it." I stopped six feet from him. "Term two."

"I know."

"You don't lie to me. Not even to protect me."

"I know, Elise."

"Four hundred and twenty thousand dollars," I said. "And you let me find it out from Damon, in front of everybody I'm asking to trust me."

He took it standing.

The wind off the water pushed his shirt flat against him, and he didn't look away once.

"It wasn't for the money," he said.

"Everybody says that."

"Then here's the rest, and you can decide." He breathed in.

"I came to your father's memorial to use you."

The gulls went over, loud.

"I read about the auction notice before you did," he said. "Somebody at the bank owed me a favor."

"I knew the guarantor was the daughter who'd left. I thought, she'll be angry, she'll be loud, Damon will lose his head."

"I thought you'd be the stupid thing he signed."

"I said that," I said. "At the courthouse."

"You did. You were right."

I folded my arms over the scar.

"And now?"

"Now I've watched you eat soup at four in the morning with a dishwasher." He didn't smile.

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