They Trashed My Books, So I Rewrote My Life novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: One Pan

By two in the afternoon every one of my books was back on its shelf.

Hattie had sorted them by the lot numbers, and then I had sorted them again by the order they belonged in, and the study looked like mine.

Rhys hung back in the doorway with dust on his shirt and said nothing at all.

At two-thirty the long black car stopped at my curb.

Eleanor got out with the driver holding an umbrella over her, and she came up my path alone.

I met her on the porch.

"Walk with me to the car," she said. "I have something for you."

"Say it here."

Her eyes went past me to Rhys in the hall and Hattie behind him, and then she nodded.

"There is a house on Beacon Hill," she said. "It is my husband's, and I have signed it to you. His seat on the board is yours. There is an income that comes with both. You would never need to be cold again."

Hattie's mouth fell open.

I looked at the envelope in her hand and then at her tired face.

"You came to give me a coat," I said.

"I came to give you what he meant you to have."

"He meant me to have a lot of things," I said. "He had thirty years to hand me any of them."

"Natalie."

"My mother returned your coats every winter, and she was right to. I'm returning this one."

Her eyes filled, and she did not wipe them.

"I have a house," I said. "It has a lock that I changed myself and a deed with one name on it. I'll take your help when I ask for it, and I'll ask for it on my own terms. Today I'm not asking."

She put the envelope back in her bag.

"Your mother would have liked you," she said.

"She raised me. She did like me."

Eleanor nodded and went down the steps with her back straight.

When I turned around, Rhys was staring at me and had nothing to say.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing."

"You thought I'd take it."

He took a while to answer.

"I thought that people go back," he said. "Every person I've ever helped goes back to the people they know. I was waiting for you to do it."

"And?"

"And you didn't."

He went home at four to sleep, because he had been awake since the night before, and the house went quiet around me.

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