“I wrote refused on every one.”
“I know,” David said. “I have them all. I kept them. In case.”
I put my hands flat on the table.
Four hundred and eighteen thousand dollars.
I thought about Gerald, the bucket in the corner. I thought about my heart pills, cut in half. I thought about Ellie’s pink sneakers, glued together twice. Peanut butter sandwiches four nights in a row. The water park she said she didn’t like.
I thought about the eleven letters I’d written REFUSED on in my shaky handwriting and put back in my mailbox.
All that time. All that time, this money had been sitting in a bank in Kansas City. Waiting. For us.
And I’d refused it. Because I was too angry to open an envelope.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. My voice broke. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were lawyers. I thought you were reporters. I thought you wanted to call them heroes, and I didn’t want them to be heroes. I just wanted them to be home.”
