Double Contract Love novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Five Days

On Wednesday night Dal told me to stay out of the kitchen until he called me.

I sat on the porch swing for forty minutes listening to pans bang and a man swear softly at an oven.

At last he opened the screen door, holding a plate in both hands.

"Happy five days," he said.

On the plate sat a cake.

It leaned to the left, and the frosting was lumpy and white.

In the middle someone had piped a chicken in yellow icing, with a tiny beak and one very large eye.

"That's Mrs. Dunbar," he said, a little defensive. "Birdie picked the design. We worked on it Saturday on the phone."

"It's a hen with a stroke."

"It's the best I could do. You said no wedding without cake."

"Birdie said that."

"You agreed."

I took a fork from his hand and ate a bite standing up.

It was dry and sweet, and the best thing I had ever tasted.

I laughed until I cried, and then I just cried a little.

He put the plate down on the porch rail and held me against his chest.

"What did I do?" he said.

"You made me a cake."

"That's a bad thing?"

"It's the first nice thing anyone's done for me in two years that didn't come with a price."

His arms tightened around me.

"Come on," he said roughly. "I want to show you something."

He walked me out to the maple in the front yard.

He had already thrown a rope over a high limb, with a padded harness hanging from it.

"You want me to climb a tree," I said.

"I want you to see one."

He buckled me in himself, with big careful hands that checked every strap twice.

He took the other end of the rope and hauled, and I rose into the dark leaves.

At the top he swung me gently onto a broad branch and climbed up behind me with his lanyard clipped to the trunk.

From there I could see across the rooftops to the glow of downtown and a long ribbon of river light.

The air was warm and smelled of cut grass and woodsmoke.

"I come up here when I can't sleep," he said, close behind my shoulder. "Since Carrie. It's the only place that's quiet."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Double Contract Love from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.