The Missing Heir novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Her Place

"Thank you," Micah told the driver.

"Please tell Mr. Everhart I'll think about it."

The driver gave a small bow and left, and his footsteps faded down the old wing.

Micah turned the card over in his fingers.

"Who is Dalton Everhart?"

"A donor," I said.

"I saw him in your doorway the day you played the piano."

"The man who stopped.

Now he sends me a train ticket to Erie."

His mouth went hard.

"I don't like it, Gwen."

"Neither do I."

"I'm not going."

"You don't have to decide tonight."

"I decided just now."

He put the card in the pocket of his borrowed shirt.

"I'll keep it, though.

I want to know what he wants."

I looked at the bruise on his temple, yellow-green and healing.

"Come home with me," I said.

He stared.

"Is that you being kind?"

"No."

I picked my claw clip off the floor and shoved it in my pocket.

"That's me being selfish."

My apartment was the top floor of a brick rowhouse in Bloomfield, up two flights of stairs that smelled like somebody else's cabbage.

I had a radiator that knocked, a couch with a blanket on it, and a kitchen the size of a phone booth.

He stood in the middle of it with his hands in the pockets of the six-dollar coat.

I dropped my keys on the counter.

"Are you hungry?"

"Starving.

Do you have eggs?"

"I have eggs.

I don't have much else."

"Eggs are a lot."

He rolled up his sleeves around the cast, found a pan, and cracked four eggs one-handed against the counter.

He added butter, pepper, a little cheese, and moved the pan.

"You can cook," I said.

"Apparently."

He seemed pleased and baffled.

"My hands know it.

I don't."

We ate standing at the counter out of the pan with two forks.

I watched him lick butter off his thumb, and the whole room tipped.

I put my fork down.

"Micah."

"Yes."

"You're still on my census until the morning paperwork clears."

"I know," he said.

"Dr. Pallister, I have spent a week answering a psychiatrist's questions, and I know three things about myself.

I hate rain.

I can cook.

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