Discarded Housewife, Chosen by Her Protector novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Notebook

I pulled on a sweater and ran down the stairs with my hair still wild.

Lorna stood outside the gate in the rain, with Joey asleep on her shoulder and June holding her coat.

A fresh bruise had darkened her cheekbone, and a thin line of blood ran from her lip.

"Iris," she said, and her voice cracked. "Please. He lost his temper after you left. He hit me, and then he reached for June."

I wrenched the gate open.

"Iris, wait," Ronan said behind me.

"They're children," I said, and took Joey from her arms.

He was warm and limp, and his hair smelled of sleep.

June pressed against my leg, and I knelt and held her.

"Did your father hurt you?" I asked her.

"No," June said. "He shouted at Lorna in the kitchen."

"Did he hit her?"

June looked at Lorna, and then at me.

"I was upstairs," she said. "Lorna came and got me and said we had to go."

That was not a yes, and it was not a no.

Ronan stood beside me, very still.

"Iris," he said quietly. "A word."

He walked me three steps from the gate, and Lorna watched us over Joey's head.

"If we shelter Blackwater's Luna and two Blackwater children on Redfern ground, Ansel can say we took them," he said. "Thursday's hearing turns on that."

"So I turn her away in the rain with a bleeding lip?"

"No. We do this the way a court would want it written down."

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