The Northern Wind Couldn't Keep Me novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Rule One

At two in the morning I was at the attic desk, writing chapter one again from memory.

Tripp's mother had burned my notebooks, and my laptop was in her house, so I used a pen and the paper from Knox's stack.

I dated every page in the corner and signed my initials.

The radiator knocked, twice, like a man who wanted to be let in.

A knock came at the door, and it was not the radiator.

"It's open," I said.

Knox came in with two mugs and set one at my elbow.

He had changed into a gray T-shirt, and his hair was rumpled from sleep or from not sleeping.

"You're writing," he said.

"I'm making a record. Yvonne burned the drafts, so I'm writing the book again, with dates, in my own hand."

"The board won't care about a handwritten page."

"Then I'll make them care."

I told him about the study and the check and the fireplace.

I told him what Tripp had said about the notes.

His hand closed around his mug.

"He'll swear it," Knox said. "He'll swear it in front of the board, and my stepmother will nod, and nobody in that room will ask him to write one note in his own hand."

"I'd ask."

"You won't be allowed to speak first." He set down the mug. "That's why I need to tell you something, and you're going to hate it."

"I already hate everything."

"There's a rule for the next twenty days."

I waited.

"Nothing between us that the board can call a favor," he said. "Not a meal, not a ride, not a coat. If Yvonne can say the judge and the applicant are close, she'll say the pages were a gift for a favorite, and she'll say it with a straight face."

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