Chapter Five: What They Wanted
I made Malcolm read me the rest of the folder. All of it. Slowly.
I needed to hear it out loud. I needed to know.
Kayla brought me a cup of ice chips and stood in the corner, pretending she wasn’t listening. Malcolm didn’t send her away. “She should hear it too,” he said. “If anybody comes to this floor asking about you tonight, I want the nurses to know.”
It was about my house.
Of course it was.
Frank and I bought a little two-bedroom bungalow in Ballard in 1986. Green with white trim, a front porch with a swing, a big cherry tree in the backyard that the kids used to climb. We paid ninety-four thousand dollars for it. Frank’s father lent us the down payment.
When Frank died nine years ago, the house was paid off. I still lived there. I still swung on the porch swing in the evenings.
