The Name on the Broadcast novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Confession

I put my phone on the table between us, screen down.

I'd already pressed record under the table.

My father didn't look at it. I'm not sure he'd have cared.

"Tell me," I said.

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"I bought her," he said. "You know that. You figured that out. You were always smarter than me."

"How much?"

He flinched.

"Three thousand. Your grandma handled it. A man drove her up from the city in the back of a camper. She had a bag over her head and her hands taped." He swallowed. "Mama said I was twenty-one and needed a wife, and the Hasketts needed a baby in the house."

"And then I came."

"And then you came." He looked at the bottle instead of me. "In March. In the back room. It snowed."

"Tell me about her," I said. "Tell me about my mother."

"She never stopped fighting. Not once. Not in six years. Mama hated her for it." He almost smiled. "She'd put salt in Mama's coffee. She sang the whole Sunday service off-key on purpose."

"And she ran."

"Twice." He held up two fingers. "The first time, you stopped her. I watched from the window. I didn't go out. I just watched."

My stomach turned over.

"The second time was the Fourth of July," he said. "Me and the others were down at the river with the fireworks. Drunk. All of us. That's how it always is on the Fourth."

"Except Grandma."

"Mama doesn't drink." He laughed once, ugly. "Mama watches."

He poured. He didn't drink it. He just held the glass.

"Annie took you. She carried you down the back field, past the orchard, toward the old fishing road. You were asleep on her shoulder. She'd wrapped you in a dish towel so you wouldn't get cold."

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