I stared at him. “You told me the repairman waived labor because he knew Randall.”
“He did know Randall.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No. Randall paid it.”
The fluorescent hum seemed to get louder.
I looked down at the papers. Every number felt invasive. Every payment had been made by a man who, as far as I knew then, had walked out of my bedroom and erased himself from my life. I remembered standing in the pharmacy with shaking hands and a knit cap pulled down to my eyebrows, listening to the clerk tell me my balance was lower than expected. I had cried in the parking lot afterward because I thought some small administrative mercy had found me.
It had been Randall.
Quietly.
Secretly.
Again.
Jonah picked up one of the sheets. “So he gets to play deadbeat in public and husband in secret?”
Wade’s eyes flashed. “He was dying.”
