Chapter 18: Key in the Straw

By four o'clock I was wearing the red dress, and Tiernan had locked the barn.

"I'm not going to let you walk into that room," he said.

He stood in front of the big door with the key in his fist.

"You're letting me?"

"He sealed a shaft. He took two million dollars and bought a boat. He's cornered, Gwendolyn, and a cornered man will do anything."

"So I should stay here."

"Cordelia and Nana can vote. You can wait at the farm with the mare."

I looked at the key.

I looked at him.

"You made me a rule," I said.

"What rule?"

"You said I couldn't do one thing because she did it first."

"That was one night."

"It's the best rule anyone ever gave me. And you're breaking it right now."

He frowned.

"You want me to stay behind because Ambrose is dangerous, and Cordelia is hiding, and Nana's eighty-one.

"Somebody else has decided it already, and I'm supposed to fall in."

"That isn't what I'm doing."

"It's the same thing," I said. "You're picking for me first. Twenty years of it, Tiernan, and now you."

His face changed.

It went from stubborn to something else, and I watched him hear it.

"I'm scared," he said.

"I know."

"I've watched everyone who loved you push you into a corner, and I'm not going to be the next one."

"Then don't."

"But I can't watch you walk in there."

"Then you'll have to come with me."

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