Fated to My Mate's Uncle novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Great-Nephew

I knelt down on the gravel so my face was level with his.

His feet were bare and gray with dust.

"Who told you?" I asked.

"Nobody. You can smell it." He wiped his nose on his wrist. "He smells like me. Dad in the pictures doesn't smell like anything. He's just a picture."

"Does your mom know you know?"

He shook his head hard.

"She'd cry. She cries when I say things."

Patsy had gotten out of the truck.

She stood a little way off, not coming closer.

"Are you going to take him away?" the boy said. "Mom says you're going to make them put him across the river."

I could have lied.

He'd have known.

"I'm going to tell the truth about something that happened a long time ago," I said. "And after that, the grown-ups decide. Not me."

"Is it a bad thing? The thing that happened?"

"Yes, honey. It's a bad thing."

He looked at his bare feet.

"Is it about my dad in the pictures?"

"Yes."

He didn't cry.

That was the worst part.

He just nodded, like a small old man.

An enforcer came down the hall steps two at a time.

"Kid! Your mom's looking for you."

The boy squeezed my hand once, hard, and let go.

He walked back up the steps without looking back.

I sat in Patsy's truck for a long time before she started it.

"That poor little bastard," Patsy said.

"Don't call him that."

"I meant it nicely."

The fire took nine more days to die.

The crew spent them on the black above the school, under the fire truce, digging out stumps and cold-trailing every inch of the line.

Mop-up is the ugly part.

You crawl on your knees and put the back of your bare hand on the ash to feel for heat.

You do it for ten hours, then you do it again.

I went with them every morning.

I walked the line ahead of the crew and sniffed out the stumps still burning underneath.

They called it "the Nose patrol."

The kid in the yellow shirt made me a sign out of cardboard and tied it to my back.

It said CAUTION: WIDE LOAD.

I wasn't even showing yet.

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