AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m not opening it. I should tear it up.
I hear Noah’s hard tone in my head, berating me for not calling him when I was in trouble.
But Roger Harris doesn’t scare easily. I tried all kinds of threats when I wrote to him about the water damage seeping through the ceiling over my kitchen.
Curiosity gets the best of me, and I tear it open, finding a check. My heart stops for a moment when I imagine this might be a returned check.
I’ve only bounced a check once in my life. And it still haunts me. Not just the fees I had to cover, but the fact that the check I’d written was less than all the fees combined.
I flip it over, expecting the worst. Expecting giant red letters for the amount owed.
But…it's not one of mine.
It's a check from Townshead Development, signed by Roger Harris. In the amount of…five thousand six hundred dollars?
“Holy shit.”
“What?” Em rushes over. “Is it your foot?”
I slam the check down before I could even process what it’s for.
“What’s that?”
“Junk mail,” I blurt out. “Makes me angry.”
She frowns but shakes it off. “I brought you ice.”
I grab the rim-filled cup and stare up at her awkwardly. “Thank you.”
“I’ll…leave you to whatever it is you’re going to do with that.”
“Appreciate it.”
I pull the lid off my coffee—which has since gone cold—pour it into the cup of ice, then flip the check over again.
Yep. Still addressed to me for the amount worth more than two month’s salary.
I search the envelope for a clue and find a note on the bottom.
A donation in memory of Sara Whitley – Townshead Development
Donation?
After he tried to squeeze every dollar out of me for the last few months?
My instinct is to call Noah and I don’t know where that came from. Noah and I are still nothing. Our truce is all it is. A truce so we don’t fight in front of the people we care about.
He’s not my lawyer or my hero. I can handle whatever this means myself.
By not depositing it until I get to the bottom of its true purpose.
I know it’s noon because my stomach growls. My body has always worked like a clock. If I don’t have my coffee by nine a.m., I’ll get a headache. If I’m not looking at food by noon, my stomach sends me a message to get on that. By three, I start to crash, and by six, I’m somewhat awake again and cooking up some concoction I swear is edible.
“Charlie?”
I look up to see a young man approaching me. He’s in a red vest and baseball hat.
“Um…that’s me.”
