Room 14's Secret novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Farmhouse

The farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel road, with a porch light on and a field going dark behind it.

"It was my father's," Zachary said, killing the engine. "Nobody has lived here since he died. Nobody will look for us here."

He carried Leanne up the steps without waking her.

I followed him in with the cardigan clutched around me.

The house smelled of woodsmoke and old paper.

There was a kitchen with a long table, a stove with a cold kettle, and a staircase that creaked on every step.

He put Leanne in the downstairs bedroom, in a narrow bed with a quilt on it.

She was asleep before he finished tucking her in.

I stood in the doorway.

My hands would not stop shaking.

I had held them still for nineteen days, in front of nurses and cameras and my own husband.

Now that no one was watching, my body wanted its turn.

"Sit," Zachary said.

He steered me to a kitchen chair and wrapped a quilt around my shoulders.

He lit the stove and put the kettle on.

I watched his back while he moved around the room.

He had known me for four days, and he was the only person alive who knew where I was.

"Tea?" he asked, and then he stopped with the box in his hand.

I looked at it.

Then I started to laugh, and it was not a good sound.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That was stupid."

"It's all right."

"It isn't. Water, then." He put the box back on the shelf. "I don't have anything else."

He set a glass in front of me and sat across the table.

For a while neither of us said anything.

"I should tell you something," he said at last.

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