Marine Returns From Okinawa to Find Her Bungalow Already Sold
“I did not have time for a payment plan,” Chad said. “These guys did not want fifty dollars a week. They wanted the whole sixty-four thousand, or they were going to put my head through my windshield.”
“Where did the sixty-four thousand dollars go?” I asked.
“It went straight to their collector,” Chad said, putting the lighter back in his pocket. “Every dime of it. Benson handled the wire transfer directly so the cash would never touch my account.”
“And you let him take the house for forty thousand,” I said.
“I did what I had to do to stay alive,” Chad said, opening his car door. “You were safe in Okinawa, Maria. You did not have to look at those guys every day.”
He got into the car and slammed the door before I could reply, the engine sputtering to life with a cloud of dark exhaust.
I drove back to Maggie Street, the green pines along the road blurting yellow sunlight through the windshield.
Emily Morrison was sitting on the front porch steps of my bungalow, holding a blue porcelain mug in both hands.
