Chapter 25: Give Me That

Clara's POV

I heard the car door through the kitchen window, and I knew it was him before I looked.

I was drying the last cup.

My mother's light was off in the back room, and my father's snoring came down the hall in its slow, even rhythm.

I put the cup down and went out the back door in my socks.

The frost had started.

It crunched under my feet as I crossed the grass to the wall.

Miles stood at the end of his drive with a sheaf of paper held against his chest.

His father stood three feet from him with one hand out, palm up.

"Give me that," Mr. Ashworth said again.

"No."

I stopped at the wall.

Miles did not look round.

"That is not yours," his father said. "Your mother had no right to take it."

"It's a contract with a girl's name on it, and the girl never got a copy."

"It protects a child."

"It protects you."

Mr. Ashworth lowered his hand slowly.

He looked past his son and found me standing in the dark in my socks and a cardigan.

"Miss Doyle," he said. "Perhaps you can explain to him what he is throwing away."

"He knows."

"He is thirty years old and he has no job, no car and no name that will open a door in this state."

"He has a door," I said. "Mine."

Miles made a small sound that might have been a laugh.

His father turned back to him.

His voice dropped, and it was worse than shouting.

"You want to be a man who lives over a shop teacher's garage, Miles? You want your children to be a footnote?"

"I want them to know who their grandfather is."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a fact. They'll be told it."

I stepped over the wall.

I walked across the Ashworth lawn in my socks, and I did not feel the cold.

I stopped beside Miles, and he held out the papers without looking at me.

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