My Family Wants Me Gone, I Take Their Luck With Me novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: Arlo's Question

I put my coffee down on the boards.

Marigold was still looking at the flashlight. She clicked it on and off.

"On paper," I said. "What kind of paper?"

"The kind Uncle Arlo has. From the court. It says he's mine and I'm his." She clicked the flashlight again.

Arlo had gone very still beside me.

"Bug," he said quietly.

"I'm asking her, not you."

I got up off the edge of the pier and crouched in front of her, so we were the same height.

"I can't sign your paper," I said. "That's your uncle's paper. And your mom's."

Her chin started to wobble.

"But I can tell you something true."

She looked up.

"I'm not getting back on the bus. Not tomorrow. Not ever. I'm going to check your math homework until you're in college and you still think seven times eight is fifty-four."

"It feels like fifty-four."

"I know it does."

She threw both arms around my neck so hard I nearly went over backward.

The flashlight dug into my spine. I didn't care.

Over her shoulder, I saw Arlo's face.

He wasn't looking at the water anymore. He was looking at us, with his hand over his mouth.

"Okay," Marigold said into my hair. "That's good enough. For now."

She let go and stomped back down the pier in her rain boots.

At the diner door she turned around.

"Uncle Arlo! You should ask her something too!"

"Bed!"

The door banged.

Arlo laughed into his hands. When he took them away, his eyes were wet.

"Sorry about that," he said.

"Don't be."

He didn't ask me anything that night.

He asked me the next night.

The diner closed at eight. Marigold was asleep by nine, after two stories and a glass of water and a long argument about a third.

At nine thirty, Arlo knocked on the door frame of the office, where I was doing the week's books.

"Come out to the shed," he said. "I want to show you something."

The shed hadn't changed. One bare bulb. The workbench. The radio with its coat-hanger antenna.

Sawdust on everything.

There was a new horse on the sawhorses. A small gray one from the inside row, already stripped to bare wood.

Horse number two.

"The old woman's family adopted her this afternoon," Arlo said. "They're calling her Lighthouse. Marigold's idea."

"Of course it was."

He leaned against the workbench. He didn't pick up a tool.

He just looked at me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I've been trying to say this for two days. I keep losing my nerve."

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