He Picked the Wrong Wife to Sacrifice for His Sister novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Back Door

I stood on my grandmother's porch and read the notice three times.

Then I put my bag down and sat on the top step, because my legs wanted me to.

The padlock was brass and new and still had the sticker on it.

A screen door slapped next door.

"Don't bother picking it," a voice called. "He had two men and a drill, and they were here before lunch."

The woman who crossed the grass was in her eighties, in rubber garden clogs and a church dress.

She had known my grandmother for fifty years. She carried a covered dish in both hands.

"They told me it was a maintenance matter," she said. "I told them the owner was a hygienist with a very good right hook."

"I don't have a right hook."

"Your grandmother did. Move over."

She sat down beside me on the step with a grunt and put the dish in my lap.

"Chicken and rice. It's still warm."

I didn't mean to cry, but I did.

She let me. She patted my knee twice, firmly, and waited.

"He had me add him to the deed after the wedding," I said. "He said it was for the taxes. It was so he could do this."

"Mm-hm."

"I don't have anywhere else to go."

"Honey, you have a back door."

She reached into the pocket of her dress and brought out a rusty key on a loop of yarn.

"Your grandmother left this with me in a coffee can the year she got sick. She said, 'If that girl ever needs to get in and doesn't want to ask anybody, give her this.'"

"She said that?"

"She said it about the husband before you married him, too." The woman's mouth went flat. "I should have said something. I'm sorry."

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