Tell Me Not to Love You novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Notice of Sale

I read the page twice, because the first time the words did not mean anything.

Then I put down the water glass and picked up the letter and turned around.

Garrick was already awake.

He lay on his side in the lamplight, propped on one elbow.

I saw in his face that he knew exactly which paper I was holding.

"You said the thirty-first," I said.

"You found it before I could."

"That's not an answer."

"No." He sat up and pulled the sheet over his lap, the most helpless gesture I'd ever seen on a grown man. "It isn't."

I held the notice up in the lamplight.

"Windward is being sold."

"Yes."

"At auction. On the lawn. In three weeks."

"Yes."

"While you were kissing me in the bakery," I said slowly, "and eating pie in the window, and telling forty people you loved me."

"Sol."

"Don't say my name like that yet."

He shut his mouth.

I sat on the edge of his desk chair, still naked, because I was too angry to be cold.

"Tell me all of it," I said. "Now. I don't care what you wanted to have done first."

He pulled on his trousers, slowly.

Then he sat on the iron bed with his hands hanging between his knees.

"My father died two years ago. Heart. You know that."

"I know."

"What you don't know is that the month before he died, Whitcombe Mills lost its two biggest buyers."

He stared at the wall.

"A grocery chain went bankrupt. A cereal company changed suppliers. He hid it from everyone, and borrowed against the house to cover the payroll."

"And you found out."

"At the funeral. I found a drawer full of notices."

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