Plowed by My Stepfather novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Barn

Gretchen shoves Dean over the secrets and ends up pinned against a post. Kent shows up drunk and Dean sends him off, then tells her to lock her door.

"She made you promise," I said.

"She did."

"What else did she make you promise?"

He didn't answer, and he turned and walked out the back door.

I followed him across the yard in my bare feet, into the cool of the barn.

He was already at the feed room, scooping oats into a bucket with his good hand, his back to me.

"What else, Dean?"

"That's all I know about the note."

"That is not what I asked."

"Gretchen."

"My mother told me in September it was early and treatable," I said.

"I found out she was dying from a nurse I'd never met, on the last night."

"Now I find out she was in debt, and you've known for two years."

He set the bucket down.

"I'm not going to fight with you in her barn."

"Then don't fight. Answer me."

He picked the bucket up again and turned toward the stalls.

I took one step and shoved him between the shoulder blades with both hands.

It didn't move him.

He turned around fast, dropping the bucket, and caught both my wrists in his one good hand.

Then my back was against the center post, and the wood was warm from the sun on the roof.

He had my arms over my head. His body was a hand's width from mine.

I could hear him breathing.

Neither of us said anything.

The oats were running out of the bucket across the floor.

I could smell the sweat on his shirt, and the hay, and the soap.

His thumb was on the inside of my wrist where the pulse was.

I knew he could feel it.

I looked at his mouth.

He looked at mine.

The August I was twenty-two, a month after the wedding, a storm had come across the section line.

It came so fast that we ran for the machine shed.

We stood inside with the rain screaming on the tin, close like this.

He had lowered his face until it was an inch from mine.

Then he had stopped, and he had said, "Your mother is in that house."

I had packed my car before sunrise.

I had come back for two Christmases and a funeral in five years, and nothing else.

"Careful," I said, softly, in the barn. "Mom's watching."

He let go of my wrists and stepped back.

His hands went to his hips, and he looked up at the rafters with his jaw working.

"That was a cheap shot," he said.

"It was your line."

"Yes."

He bent down and began picking up the bucket, the scoop, the oats.

His good hand was shaking.

"I'm not going to touch you, Gretchen. Not in her barn. Not in her house. Not under her roof."

"Fine."

"I mean it."

"I said fine."

I went back to the house and pulled the rolltop shut and sat on my childhood bed until it was dark.

At ten, headlights swung across the bedroom wall.

I went to the window.

Kent's car had stopped crooked in the yard with the driver's door open and the dome light on.

He stood beside it holding my duffel bag.

"Gretchen!" He had a bottle in his other hand. "Babe! I brought your stuff!"

I got to the porch just as the bunkhouse door opened.

Dean came across the yard in his socks.

He was in an undershirt and jeans, and he was not hurrying at all.

"Hey, Dean, buddy." Kent swayed and grinned. "Tell her I'm sorry."

"I did it for us. I did it all for us."

"I've been trying to take care of her for months."

"Give me your keys," Dean said.

"I'm not drunk."

"Give me your keys, Kent."

Kent looked at him, and then at me, looking small and defeated.

He handed them over.

"I love her," he said to Dean. "You know I do."

"I know you do," Dean said, very quietly. "Sit on the step."

Kent sat on the step.

Dean took out his phone with the bandaged hand and called Orrin.

Twenty minutes later Orrin's truck came up the lane, and Orrin got out and put an arm around his son's shoulders.

"Thank you, Dean," he said. "I'm so sorry, Gretchen. He's had a terrible day. We all have."

He took the keys, took the bottle, took his son, and drove away.

I put the duffel bag on the porch and stared after the taillights.

Dean stood beside me.

He smelled like the bar soap.

"Sleep in the house tonight," he said. "Lock your door."

"From who?"

He had already started back across the yard.

"From me," Dean said.

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