Madly Yours novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: His Own Voice

I showed Leland the screen.

He read it, and the white went out of his face, and something colder came in.

"Porter?"

I nodded.

"Do you want to see him?"

I thought about it for one honest second.

Then I typed.

I want him to see me.

The Halstead gate was black iron, twelve feet high, at the bottom of a short drive.

Porter stood on the other side of it in a navy suit, with his hands in his pockets.

A white convertible idled at the curb behind him.

Allegra sat in the passenger seat with the window down and her sunglasses on her head.

Half the household had found a reason to be in the front garden.

A gardener with shears.

Two housekeepers with a rug they weren't beating.

The driver in the grey coat, polishing a car that was already clean.

Gran sat on the front steps in her pink tracksuit.

Leland walked beside me down the drive, slow, on the cane.

Porter saw my face and his own face did something complicated.

"Colette. Baby."

He reached through the bars.

I stopped a foot short of his hand.

He looked past me at Leland and lowered his voice, man to man.

"Look. I don't know what her mother told you, but she's not well."

"She got hit by a truck. She can't hear. She can't talk. She had a fever last week."

"She doesn't understand what she signed."

He said all of it with me standing right there.

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