Anvil novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Page Three

Lizzie's POV

"You said tomorrow," I said again, because he hadn't answered.

Tucker stood up from the kitchen chair.

He did not step toward me, and he did not reach for the box.

"I did," he said. "And I lay there for two hours knowing Rhett could walk in before tomorrow came."

"So you took it out of my closet while I slept."

"Yes."

"Out of my house. Off my shelf. In the dark."

"Yes."

I had expected him to argue.

I had a whole speech ready for the argument, and his plain yes took the floor out from under it.

"Danny gave that box to me," I said. "Not to you, and not to your club."

"I know."

"I carried it three years. I dusted around it. I told my own daughter it was just tools."

My voice shook, and I hated it.

"You had no right, Tucker."

"No," he said. "I didn't."

He looked at me, and his gray eyes did not drop.

"If you want me out of the house, I'll go. I'll take nothing with me."

I looked at the open lid and the pale yellow straps, the rows of bundles that could have paid my rent for forty years.

I thought of the sixty hours a week I worked.

I thought of Danny saying, don't open it, and the way he had held my face in both hands.

"Sit down," I said.

He sat.

I pulled out the chair across from him, and my legs were not steady.

"Show me the page you saw," I said. "All of it."

He slid the black notebook across the table.

The cover was soft from handling.

I opened it to page three, because his thumb was already there.

IT WAS NEVER ME. TELL DUTCH.

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