Five Firemen Carried Me Out, and Not One Will Put Me Down novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Ansel's POV

Ansel's POV

I stood in the county lot at seven in the morning with four other grown men and a dead channel in my ears, and I knew exactly how much I had left in me.

It was not much.

I had been angry for two days and two nights.

I am a patient man by trade.

I run a road crew in a county that gets nine feet of snow, and I have never once lost my temper at a grader.

But I had sat in that dark house for four years and talked to a voice, and the voice turned out to have a braid and freckles and a very small mouth.

Then she keyed the mic and said, "Don't ever do it again," to Gil, and cried while she said it.

My anger did not go anywhere.

It just stopped having anywhere to stand.

She came out through the glass doors in Gil's big coat, gray in the face, and walked straight past the four of them to me.

"You said come see your house," Jo said.

"I said that," I said.

"I'm asking."

Gil gave me the smallest nod I have ever seen.

The others did not say a word, God bless them.

I drove her up the Hazen Hill road with her truck behind me, and she did not talk.

I had not meant to see her in my house with the sun coming in.

It looked like what it was, nine rooms and one man.

I had kept the kitchen and the bathroom and the bed.

The rest was dust sheets and the good furniture my wife had left because it was too heavy to carry.

Jo stood in the front hall with her hand on the newel post, so small under the high ceiling that the whole hall seemed to lean toward her.

"The light's on," she said.

It was daylight.

I had left the porch light burning anyway.

"It's always on," I said.

"I know," she said.

"I wrote it on a sticky note."

I did not say anything for a while.

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