Chapter 6: Hay

Once lasted two days.

He didn't touch me on Sunday.

He ran the barn, called me Lulu in front of the hands, and handed me a clipboard when I got close.

On Monday we bred the grey mare.

He stood at the stallion's head and I stood where he'd put me, to the side and out of the kick line, and I did everything right.

He said "good" twice, to the horses.

I didn't sleep either night.

I lay in my old room with my window open and listened for his boots crossing the yard to the foreman's room off the barn office.

On Monday night I heard them cross, and I heard the barn door close.

I gave him an hour.

Then I put on his old flannel shirt, the one he'd left in the laundry, and nothing under it.

I walked across the yard in my bare feet.

The barn was dark except for the one bulb over the office door.

I didn't go to the office.

I climbed the ladder to the hayloft.

I sat down in the hay at the edge of the loft, where he'd see me the second he came out.

Then I waited.

Ten minutes later the office door opened.

I heard him cross the aisle.

I heard him stop.

"Lulu," he said, from below.

"I'm up here."

"Come down."

"No."

A long silence.

"You said once," I said. "That was Saturday. It's Monday."

"I said once because I meant it."

"Then come up and tell me to my face."

I heard the ladder creak.

He climbed slowly, one rung at a time.

His head and shoulders came over the edge.

He was in his undershirt and jeans, barefoot, his hair wet from the sink.

He saw the flannel shirt, and he knew whose it was.

He stopped on the top rung.

"That's mine," he said.

"I know."

"Go to bed."

"No."

"Rule one. In this barn I teach and you do what I say."

"Then teach me," I said. "I'm doing what you say. Say it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Daddy Can You Teach Me Some Naughty Night Things? from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.