She Steps Out Of Betrayal's Shadow To Rebuild Her Broken Home novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Stump

Zachary Maddox had been standing at the stump since seven that morning.

He had told himself it was to keep an eye on the tent crew. He had a chainsaw in the truck and a county permit in his pocket, and he told himself that too.

He had actually come to see if she would walk out.

She walked out.

He watched her cross the lawn in a pale blue dress, with her mother beside her and sixty people staring at her back.

She held her chin the way she had at nine, when she had taken the blame for his broken window.

Something in his chest gave way.

"Zachary," Dorothy Harlow said, when they reached him. Her voice had a bite in it, but her eyes were wet. "I'll sit in your father's kitchen and make myself tea, if you'll allow it."

"You know where the key is, Mrs. Harlow."

"I do." She squeezed her daughter's arm. "Don't stay out here long. You're shivering."

She went up the slope to the gatehouse.

That left the two of them and the stump.

Melinda crossed to it and laid her hand flat on the cut wood.

The rings were pale and tight, a hundred and twenty of them, and the saw had left them rough.

"They didn't even sand it," she said.

"They sanded the top for the flower arch. The edges they left."

"Why did he cut it down?"

"A pavilion." Zachary kept his voice neutral. "The tent people said the roots buckled the platform. He didn't ask your mother or me."

"Did he ask me?"

He didn't answer, and she didn't look at him.

"You stood out here the whole week before it came down," he said, finally. "Two or three hours a day. Nobody could get you to come in. Then one morning you stopped."

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