My Father Went to Prison for Their Money, So I Married Their Heir novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: The Loft

Clarice found me in the garden on Saturday morning with a basket of cut figs I had no right to be picking.

"Early Violets," she said, looking at the basket. "Your mother's variety. I had the nursery find me a cutting."

"Ms. Clarice..."

"Clarice. I'm eighty-three, I haven't time to be a Ms." She took a key off a ring in her cardigan pocket and pressed it into my good hand. "This opens the records loft over the old terminal office. Everything my husband kept before the computers is up there, in boxes. Oskar kept receipts like other men keep grudges."

"Why are you giving me this?"

"Because the trial exhibits went into those boxes before the lawyers sealed them. And because Winston has never once climbed those stairs."

She looked past me, at the house.

"He has an old man's laziness. It's my favorite thing about him."

I went that night, alone, in sneakers, with a flashlight.

The old terminal office stood at the edge of the yard, a brick building with the Ravenel name worn off the front.

The loft was up an iron stair that rang under my feet.

Boxes filled it to the rafters, labeled in a man's square hand, and a single bulb hung over a table.

I had my hand on the third box when the stair rang again behind me.

I did not turn.

"I told you I'd wait for the storm to be over," Beau said from the top step.

"The storm's been over for two days."

"I know. I've been standing outside the door for ten minutes trying not to follow you."

I did turn then.

He stood in the light from the one bulb with his shirt open at the throat and his hands hanging at his sides.

"You're breaking the terms," I said.

"Yes."

"Which one?" I said.

"Pick one."

I crossed the floor between the boxes and took hold of the front of his shirt in my fist.

"No touching in private," I said, "was mine."

"It was."

"I'm breaking it. You don't get to apologize."

I pulled his mouth down onto mine.

He made a long low sound against my lips, and his arms closed around me so hard my feet left the boards.

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