Chapter 8: Storm Terms

I called my father four times on Thursday and twice on Friday.

He did not pick up.

On Saturday I drove to his house and found his truck gone and the porch light burning in broad daylight.

By Sunday I had a question in my chest that I did not want to ask anyone.

Sawyer came at noon with a bag of groceries and a kite.

He and Poppy spent the afternoon on the beach below the cabin.

I sat on the porch with a book I did not read.

He knelt in the sand and showed her how to let the string run out through her mittens.

She shrieked every time it climbed.

I watched them and thought, he is a good father.

That was the worst part of it.

The sky went dark gray around four.

By five the wind had torn the kite out of Poppy's hands, and by six rain came sideways off the lake.

"You should go," I said from the doorway. "Before the road floods."

"I'll go after we eat."

"Sawyer."

"Poppy's hungry."

I made soup.

We ate at the table with the stove roaring, and Poppy told him in great detail about the principal's goldfish.

By eight she was asleep in the bedroom with her rabbit.

The rain was coming down hard on the roof.

Sawyer went out to check the road.

He came back in soaked to the skin, with water running off his chin.

"It's under," he said. "A foot at the culvert. I can't get the truck through until it drains."

"You can't stay."

"I know."

"Rule three."

"I know what rule three is."

He pulled off his jacket and hung it on the hook.

"Tell me where you want me. The porch?"

Lightning lit the window.

The porch was a lake.

"The floor by the stove," I said.

He sat down on it, and I sat on the other side of the rug.

We looked at each other across four feet of faded wool.

"Your father called me," he said, after a while. "On Tuesday."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Five Years Gone, She Walked Back In, So I Walked Out from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.