Chapter 14: Our Daughter's Hero

Hattie's POV

My phone rang at five in the morning, and I had it against my ear before I was awake.

"Hat."

It was him.

I sat up in my father's rocker, where I had fallen asleep with Birdie's cooling cloth still in my hand.

"Dean."

Neither of us said anything for a while.

I heard a truck go by on his end, and wind.

"Is she with you?" he asked.

"She's asleep in my bed."

"Does she have the horse?"

"She's got the horse. I fixed him up. You didn't need to hide a note in a horse. You could have picked up a phone."

"I know."

"Five years, Dean."

"I know. Hat, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about all of it."

"Then come home."

"I can't yet. There's a paper I have to sign before I can leave this state, and then there's a wait. Two weeks. Maybe less."

"What kind of paper?"

"I'll tell you to your face."

"That's what everybody keeps telling me."

His breath shook on the line.

"Don't let Lottie take her out of the county," he said. "Don't let her get her alone. Please."

"What's she going to do?"

"I'll tell you to your face," he said again, and he hung up.

I sat there with the dead phone in my lap.

My brother's voice had been rough and careful, a stranger's voice, and somewhere in it was a boy of seventeen asking me to hold the flashlight.

At eight Lottie came up the drive.

She drove too fast, and the dust rolled over the porch rail.

A sheriff's cruiser followed her in.

The deputy got out first, a tired man I'd known since high school football, and he took off his hat when he saw me.

"Morning, Hattie."

"Morning."

Lottie climbed down from her truck in a pressed denim shirt with her hair curled.

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