Double Contract Love novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Six and Three Quarters

He told me everything on the drive, with his eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel.

Carrie had been a nurse, and a car crossed the median on I-64 on a Tuesday in March.

Birdie had been three.

For three years he had worked and come home and raised her in the green-door house with the porch swing.

"I tried dating once," he said. "A woman I met at a job. She asked what Birdie was like and then asked if there were any other relatives to hand her to."

"Oh, Dal."

"After that I sent Birdie to my mother's most weeks. She had a good life there. I told myself it was so I could work."

"It was so nobody could get to her."

"Yeah."

"And then I came into the bar," I said.

"And then you sat down on the next stool."

He smiled a little, tiredly.

"I thought, one night. I really did. Then you asked me to marry you."

"And you said yes."

"I said terms," he said. "That's how I stalled."

I looked at the fields going by, brown and gold under a clean sky.

I should have told him then.

I opened my mouth to say there was something I hadn't told him either.

Then the farm came into view, and the word went out of my head.

It was a white clapboard house with a wide porch and a tin roof, set back from the road behind a split-rail fence.

A small figure sat on the top step in rain boots, a yellow raincoat, and a pair of cutoff shorts.

She had wild dark-blond hair and a missing front tooth, and she was swinging her legs hard enough to knock her heels together.

The second the truck stopped, she was off the step and running.

"Daddy!"

He swung her up in one arm and she wrapped herself around his neck.

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