A Love Lost to the Years novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Seven Years of Lies

She was standing at the curb outside Nordlund Joinery in a black coat, with her hands bare and red from the wind.

She had not gone in.

Next door, the woman from the bakery had propped her back door open to watch.

A courier had stopped his van half a block away and was pretending to look at his phone.

Kenneth walked up the sidewalk from the Harbor Room with his hands jammed in his jacket.

Annabel turned and waited for him to reach her.

"I said I wouldn't come in," she said. "I haven't."

"You're on my sidewalk."

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Since ten."

"It's after one."

"I know."

Her teeth were close to chattering, and she locked her jaw to stop them.

Through the shop window, Sonya stood with her arms crossed and made no move to open the door.

"Tell me why you're here," Kenneth said.

"To be where you could find me."

"I was at brunch."

"Brunch?"

"I went to see Sheldon."

Her face changed.

It went very still, and then very sharp.

"Kenneth, you shouldn't have gone near him."

"I wasn't asking."

He took the folded transmittal sheet out of his pocket and held it out.

She didn't take it.

"Read it."

She took it.

He watched her find the line, the name, the small gray print.

She read it twice.

She read the date, and the title block, and the line in the margin, and then she looked up.

"He was the developer," Annabel said.

"He bought your father's mill himself. He used an LLC. He stood over my table in that coat and told me not to ask."

"A fee," she said. "He told me a fee. I've spent nine years thinking he took a fee."

Her hand had begun to shake, and the paper shook with it.

"I looked at the closing papers a hundred times," she said. "It said Harbor Row."

"I never once looked up who ran Harbor Row. I was looking for the hand that drew it."

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