Chapter 14: The Lake House

Margo's POV

At two in the morning the cafeteria at Mercy General sells tea in paper cups and nothing else.

I bought one and sat at the table nearest the window.

Caleb was asleep upstairs in the family room, folded into a plastic chair with his jacket over his face.

He had not slept in two days, and I had let him have the chair.

Before he dropped off, he had answered Camille's question through her cracked door.

"Dexter had to move his car," he said.

Camille had been quiet a long time.

Then she asked the nurse to turn off the lamp, and she had not asked for Dexter again.

Dexter had not come back, and his phone went to voicemail every time I called.

Someone pulled out the seat across from me.

I knew the perfume before I looked up.

"Margo," Lorna said.

It had been fifteen years, and she said my name in the same flat voice she always had.

She wore her pearls and a camel coat, and she had a thick folder in one hand.

"You're not allowed to sit there."

"I am a grandmother in a hospital. I'm allowed anywhere."

She laid the folder on the table and squared its edge against mine.

"I have a proposal."

"I'm sure."

"The house on Birch Lake. Four bedrooms, a dock, paid in full. Your father loved it."

"My father is the reason I know exactly where it is."

"It is yours as of tonight. The deed is signed on my side."

I opened the folder.

The deed was there, and behind it a three-page agreement with a line for my signature.

I skimmed it twice.

In return for the lake house I would say nothing about the letter, the video or the shower.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Five Years a Fool, A Lifetime Apart from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.