Greywalker - Kat Richardson [143]
Close as they were, none of them were like me—whatever I was. With Will who hadn’t been there, I had, I thought, passed for human. I guess I didn’t pass well enough.
Someone knocked on my door, the new glass rattling a little in the frame. When I didn’t answer, I heard the swish of an envelope through the mail slot and the thin thump as it hit the floor. I left it a while, until I was sure the messenger was gone.
I turned on the desk lamp and cut the envelope open. There was a private check with a lot of zeros in the amount line, signed by Edward Kammerling. The note on the check read, “services to the community.” I put it in my desk drawer, knowing I would never cash it. I wasn’t like him, either, and I wouldn’t be bought.
I left my office in the dark and went home, brushing past the shapes of things we do not see, into shadows of uncertain futures and pasts that don’t lie down.