The Richest Woman in Town Claimed Me as Her Lost Daughter on Stage, Then I Read the Date on Her Lab Report novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: What Tom Says

On Monday after school, I carried a rented tuxedo into the high school wood shop and kicked the door shut behind me.

"You left this at my mother's," I said. "Drama club wants it back by Wednesday."

Tom was bent over a long pale board with a hand plane, in safety glasses and a canvas apron.

He looked up, and a curl of white oak slid off the plane and onto his boot.

"I didn't leave it," he said. "I wasn't sure I was allowed to go home."

The shop smelled of sawdust and machine oil and the pencil shavings kids leave in corners.

Birdhouses lined a shelf by the window, each one tilted in a different direction.

In the middle of the floor, on sawhorses, lay a table.

It was a trestle table, long and broad, with the top still rough and the legs not yet pegged.

I walked all the way around it with the garment bag over my arm.

"Who's it for?" I said.

"It's a table."

"It seats about ten."

"It's a very large table," Tom said. "I'm not fixing anything. I started it the Monday after the loading dock, and I'm not sure why."

I hung the tuxedo on a hook by the band saw.

I took a breath and decided to say it before I could have a better idea.

"I'm going to say something, and it isn't a plan," I said. "You don't have to do anything with it."

He set the plane down on the bench.

"I love you."

It came out plain, with no run-up.

Tom took off his safety glasses.

"Friday," I said. "At the cabin. You stacked eleven logs with me and you didn't say a word about the tanker, or Barbara, or how I'd been. You just handed me the next one.

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