Wash Her Feet novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Steel at Dawn

Rafe's POV

I came to this town to watch a house come down.

I had driven past the Bradstreet place on Alder Street a dozen times before I ever saw its owner's face.

It sat behind an iron fence, big and white and clean, with a swing on the porch and an oak in the yard.

Nineteen years ago my mother died in a stairwell that this family built.

I was fourteen, and nobody on that house's side of the city ever said her name.

I had a plan, and it had nothing to do with Hallie.

Then I met her on the courthouse steps, in a wedding veil, and the plan started to come apart.

I stood on the fourth deck with the wind in my teeth and her taste still in my mouth, and I knew I had not told her the one thing that mattered.

Below us the siren stopped.

Doors slammed.

"Stay behind me," I said.

"I'm fine," Hallie said, but she did not let go of my sleeve.

The foreman reached us first, red-faced, with two police officers and a firefighter behind him.

"She's a visitor," the foreman said. "She signed in. I signed her in."

"Ma'am," said the older officer, slowly. "We got a call that a woman was in distress up here. Are you thinking of hurting yourself?"

"No," Hallie said.

"A concerned friend reported you."

"I know who reported me."

From the street below, Shelby's voice floated up, thin and trembling.

"Hallie! Please come down, sweetheart! We're not angry! We just want you safe!"

I looked over the edge.

She stood on the sidewalk in the middle of thirty strangers, with a paramedic's blanket around her shoulders that nobody had given her.

She was crying so well that people were patting her back.

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