I Slept With a Stranger at the Wedding, and Monday He Was My Boss novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Porch Swing

Dane's POV

I had made a rule, and I broke it on purpose.

I want that understood, because later it mattered to her that I hadn't been dragged.

At one in the morning on Sunday night I sat on the porch swing in the dark with a cold coffee and the court file open on my knee.

Mama had put Lottie to bed twice and sat up with her until she slept.

Mama had said "Cody" once at supper, to the plate, and then gone quiet for an hour.

Nobody in my family had said that name aloud in eight months.

I couldn't read the file.

I looked at the black marker across the first paragraph and thought about a drawing of a truck.

The screen door opened behind me.

Katrina stepped out in bare feet and the big T-shirt she slept in, with her hair down.

She had a glass of water in one hand.

She saw me and stopped.

"I'll go back in," she said.

"Stay."

She looked at the file, and then at my face.

She sat down on the other end of the swing, with her feet tucked under her, and the chains creaked and settled.

For a minute neither of us spoke.

The cicadas had gone quiet and the crickets had taken over, and the whole orchard smelled of warm fruit and cut grass.

"I can't read it," I said.

"I've had it for eight months and I can't read past the first page."

"What's on the first page?"

"My sister's name," I said.

"And the judge's order that says I'm Lottie's guardian."

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