“Look at that,” Nate said in greeting. “Sir Lancelot done eighty days and don’t look too much worse for wear.”

Tho my mind was at ease, I had slept poorly in the dungeon. In the yard, the sun was as a white-hot coal upon mine eyes, but a blessing. I lay down upon the asphalt and rested with none to keep watch, for the word had been given out that Scanlon and the Aryans would try me no more.

CHAPTER 58

Zee

   I don’t know what I would have done if Charlene had answered the door, but I got lucky, and it was Bill, holding a coffee mug.

“Zee,” he said, looking at the FOR SALE sign. “Would you like to come in?”

“If that’s okay.”

I thought if I could get in the door, we could have a conversation, but while we were still standing there, Charlene came up behind him.

“What is this nonsense?” she said when she saw the sign.

I’d only brought it to the door, because I didn’t know what else to do with it.

“I think Zee has something to say to us,” Bill said.

“Well, I’ve got a few things to say to her.”

“Now, Charlene—”

“Don’t you say it. Don’t you tell me to calm down or be nice, Bill. Because my son—our son—my baby boy that I spilt tears and sweat and blood for—is sitting in a prison in Arkansas because of this girl.”

I’d never heard anybody say girl like it was a dirty word, but she did. She said a lot of other things, too. Like trash and user and selfish and ugly, and then she circled back on trash, but she was losing steam, because there was maybe half a minute of silence between her saying, “Curse the day you ever set foot in this house” and “Whatever you have to say, I’m not interested in hearing it.”

“I’m interested in hearing it,” Bill said, and pushed the door open far enough for me to step inside. I left the sign propped up against the side of their house.

“Goddamn you,” Charlene said to Bill, who led me into the dining room. She must have been in the middle of cooking dinner, but the table wasn’t set yet. A stack of plates and silverware were waiting on Trang.

“Okay, Zee,” Bill said, after we were sitting down.

“I want to say that I’m sorry, even though I know it doesn’t do you or Gentry any good. But I don’t want you to think I’m not sorry, just because I haven’t said it. And I’m sorry for coming here, because I know I’m not welcome, but I wanted to ask about the FOR SALE sign, because I don’t want Gentry to sell his land and—and the castle.” That was really as far as I’d gotten in figuring out what I needed to say. “Because I know how much it means to him, and what happened is my fault.”

“You damn right it is,” Charlene called from the kitchen, which would have been funny if I didn’t think she’d be happy to slap me silly. She came to the doorway and glared at me. “And how dare you go out to Bryn Carreg? What right do you have to go out there?”

“None,” I said. “But Rosalinda asked me to take her there to spread Edrard’s ashes.”

“Oh, you went out there to help scatter the ashes of a man you got killed?” Charlene took a deep breath and said, “That could have been my son!”

“Charlene,” Bill said.

“Our son!”

I nodded, because it was all true. Charlene took another breath and snorted it out. Then she turned and went back to the kitchen. Because Bill didn’t say anything, I tried to go back to what we’d been talking about.

“It’s bad enough Gentry is being punished for trying to help me, but I couldn’t stand for him to get punished by losing Bryn Carreg, too,” I said.

“I think you know that’s not the kind of people we are.” Bill crossed his arms on the table and leaned toward me. It made me wish Charlene would come back. I could stomach her yelling at me, because I’d spent most of my life with my mother yelling at me. I wasn’t sure I could take Bill being kind and fatherly.

“I know,” I said. “But I don’t know why you’re selling his land.”

“Well, it’s a simple matter of economies. I cosigned the loan for Gentry, because he was only nineteen, but he has been solely responsible for the mortgage and the taxes. We’ve been doing that out of his savings, but that’s about to come to an end. We can’t afford to keep paying it without his income. He understands it has to be sold.”

“I can pay it,” I said.

“Oh, the shit is getting deep in there.” Charlene slammed a cabinet in the kitchen and something metal fell on the floor.

“I think that’s a very noble gesture,” Bill said, “but the property taxes come due on December first, and it’s quite a bit of money that has to be paid all at once.”

“I can pay it.”

Charlene came stomping into the dining room and tossed two things onto the table in front of me. An envelope from the tax assessor in Chautauqua County and a loan payment book.

“Sure, you go on ahead and pay it,” she said.

Bill didn’t say anything, so I looked at the tax bill first. Almost four thousand dollars, which wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The next coupon in the payment book was for November first, in a week. Five hundred and eighty dollars. I rounded up and did the math in my head. The mortgage and taxes were about eleven thousand dollars a year.

Rosalinda’s phone had been practice for the idea of giving away money. The fifty thousand for LaReigne would go to Marcus. I wouldn’t touch that. But I had thirty-four thousand dollars for me in the safety deposit box. That would almost pay off my medical bills, but it would also pay three years of the mortgage and taxes on Gentry’s land. And I could add to that. I could pick up a few more shifts, or if worse came to worst, I could do the run for Toby. I just had to keep everything afloat until Gentry got on his feet again. I put the tax bill back in the envelope and stuffed the coupon book in there, too.

“I promise I’ll pay it,” I said. It was all I’d come there for, so I pushed my chair back from the table and stood up. “Just, please, don’t tell Gentry. You can tell him whatever you want, but don’t tell him I’m paying it.”

“You’re sure?” Bill said.

I nodded and said, “Thanks.”

I didn’t wait for them to walk me to the front door. I knew where it was.

When I got to the foyer, I heard Charlene say, “She’s never going to pay that.”

“We’ll see, I guess,” Bill said.