My Alpha Mate Secretly Got My Sister Pregnant novel · Chapter 47 of 48

Chapter 47: Six Stones

The sixth stone went down on the second of August, at seven in the morning.

My father had found it the night before, a long gray one out past the rock, and rolled it to the shallows by himself.

Now he carried it up onto the bar against his chest.

He was bent nearly double under it.

His shirt was black with river water.

He set it at the end of the row, beside the other five, and knelt and shifted it with his hands until it sat level.

Wyatt had cut the names deep and plain.

The sixth was the longest.

My father stayed on his knees in front of it a moment.

Then he got up.

I was standing at the top of the bar, where the path came down.

Jed was awake in the quilt sling, kicking, with both fists out.

Wyatt stood on one side of me.

My mother stood on the other with Dahlia, because Dahlia wouldn't go anywhere Jed wasn't.

My father turned around and looked up the bar at us.

He didn't come closer.

He'd promised.

He looked at my son for a long time.

"Jed," he said.

Just that.

Jed heard his name and turned his head toward the voice and yelled at it.

My father's face did something I didn't watch.

I looked at the stones instead.

When I looked back, he was walking up the far end of the bar toward the bank road.

The white pickup was waiting there with the toolbox across the bed.

He stopped once, at the bottom of the bank.

He looked at my mother.

She looked back at him, steadily, with her granddaughter on her chest.

She didn't nod.

She didn't turn away either.

He got into the truck.

We heard it go up the bank road and over the bridge and east through Larch Falls.

Then we couldn't hear it anymore.

"Well," my mother said.

She shifted Dahlia higher.

"He left the keys in the mailbox. He told the Beta."

"The house keys?"

"I'd like the house," my mother said.

I stared at her.

"It's the Beta's house," I said. "There's no Beta."

"Then it's a house." She looked up at the Redmoor ridge. "I've lived in it thirty years. I know where the pipes knock."

"I'd like my knitting basket back under the table. And I'd like to paint that kitchen a color he hates."

Wyatt made a sound that turned into a cough.

"What color does he hate?" I said.

"All of them," said my mother. "I'll start with green."

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