They Sold Me to the Crippled War God, So Why Was He Standing in My Father's Barn on Two Good Legs novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Barn

Raymond tells the yard she is ruined, Bernadette takes her mother's rosary, Tessie says why Gabe chose her, and Odile packs a bag; at the mill house Seb gives her a key that locks from her side.

I got out of the truck and shut the door, and every face in the yard turned to me.

Twenty neighbors stood on the gravel under the yard light, with plates of church supper cake still in their hands.

They had followed us home to see how it ended.

My father put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed.

"Ma fille," he said to the yard.

"My girl.

"I don't blame her.

"A young woman, a hard night, a man she's promised to.

"It's natural."

He lowered his voice only a little.

"But she spent the night at his house, and now we'll have to see it through."

I stepped out from under his arm.

"I was there forty minutes," I said.

"And I'm not promised to anyone."

The yard went quiet.

At the road, a pair of headlights had stopped a quarter mile off and gone dark.

"Odile," Bernadette said from the porch, in the voice she used on the altar society.

"You're upset.

"You're confused.

"You went to a man's house at night, in front of the whole parish, in your church dress."

"You told me to wear it."

Somebody coughed.

My father's smile held, and I saw for the first time what it was made of.

It was a smile that worked.

It had worked on every widow who brought him a casserole and every farmer who asked him to hold a little money till spring.

"Come inside, chère," he said.

"We'll sort it out in the house."

I went inside because I wanted my own things.

I climbed the stairs of the house I had lived in all my life and went down the hall to my room.

The yellow wallpaper had been my mother's choice.

She died when I was eleven, and my father married Bernadette four years later.

I pulled a duffel from under the bed and began to fill it.

Jeans, boots, my tuning kit, the leather roll of forks and hooks and reed knives I had carried to every church in four parishes.

My mother's rosary hung on the mirror, a string of old brown beads.

When I turned to take it, Bernadette was in the doorway.

She crossed the room and lifted it from the mirror with two fingers.

"This is a Thibodeaux heirloom," she said.

"It stays in the house."

"It was my mother's."

"Your mother is dead, and the house is mine to keep running.

"Your father says so."

She put it in her pocket.

I had been taught that a person who loses her temper loses the argument, and I stood there with my fists open and let the whole of it go through me.

Behind Bernadette, in the hall, Tessie appeared.

She had changed into a sweatshirt and her face had been washed clean.

She looked sixteen.

"Odie," she said.

Nobody had called me that since we were children.

"Don't," I said.

"I didn't plan it.

"It just happened."

"You planned it."

I zipped the bag.

"You sat across from him at every supper for a year.

"You said I worked too hard.

"You said Gabe deserved someone who had time for him."

Her eyes filled.

"He only wanted me," she said, "because you never asked him for anything.

"Not once.

"You waited three years, and you never once asked him when."

It was true, and it was the cruelest thing she could have said.

I picked up the bag and walked past her.

Bernadette said, "You're making a mistake," to my back.

"You'll be back by Sunday."

On the stairs I met my father coming up.

"Where do you think you're going?" he said.

His voice had dropped, and the warmth was gone.

"You signed me over to a man," I said.

"I'm going to see what that means."

"You'll stay in this house," he said.

"I won't," I said.

"Then you're no daughter of mine," he said, and then, as if he'd heard himself, he added, a little loud, "But you know I love you."

I took the last four steps and went out the front door.

The neighbors parted.

One of the older women put her hand on my arm and then took it away fast.

At the gate stood the old Ford that had been parked in the dark a quarter mile off.

It had come up while I was inside, and sat there with the engine idling.

Seb Guidry leaned against the fender with his arms folded.

He had not come in the yard.

I walked to him with my duffel on my shoulder and my bandaged hand tucked against my side.

"I was going to leave," I said.

"I don't have anywhere to stay."

"There's one man living in this house and a lot of rooms," he said.

"I have two I don't use."

"I'm not going to marry you," I said.

"I haven't asked you to," he said.

His voice was perfectly even.

"No one is owed my house, my name or my body, Miss Thibodeaux.

"Not by your father, and not by you.

"You can have the room, and you can have it for as long as you want.

"What you do after that is yours."

I looked at him in the headlights.

Behind me, the whole parish was watching me stand on a road with the War God.

I did not care.

"Three weeks," I said.

"That's the time my father gave me.

"I'll stay three weeks and no longer.

"I'll pay my own way."

"You'll set the terms," he said.

"I'll keep them."

He took the duffel from my shoulder and put it in the back of his truck, and held the passenger door open.

I got in.

We drove away from my father's farm in silence.

At the mill house, he led me up the long stairs to the second floor, past a hallway of closed doors.

He stopped at one at the far end and opened it.

The room had a high iron bed, a quilt, a window over the cane, and a smell of lavender and clean sheets.

Somebody had made it up in advance.

I looked at him.

"My housekeeper does all the rooms on Fridays," he said.

"I didn't know you'd come tonight."

He took a brass key off a ring in his pocket and held it out.

"This door locks from the inside.

"There's only the one key.

"It's yours."

I took it.

It was warm from his pocket.

I looked at the lock, and understood that the bolt was on my side of the door and nobody else's.

Nobody in my father's house had ever given me a key to anything.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend