Four Men Crept Into My Childhood Room, So I Kept My Eyes Shut novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Hundred and Twenty-First

Clint's POV

I wrote her a letter every month for ten years, and none of them said what I meant.

They said the weather.

They said the dog was old, and a bull had kicked me, and the kitchen was quiet.

I sat in the hayloft Thursday morning with a pad of paper on my knee and tried to write the hundred and twenty-first.

I wrote Beth.

I crossed it out.

I wrote Bethany, and crossed that out too.

The hospital had given her until Friday.

She had not said a word about it at supper.

She had cut her meat into small pieces and listened to Lyle tell a story about a drunk and a goat, and she laughed in the right places.

I watched her do it.

Watching is what I am good at.

I watched her at eighteen, over the top of a school book on the porch, and I watched her at the gate when the bus came, and I watched her eat pancakes in front of a diner full of people and decided I would kill for her.

It's an easy thing to feel.

Saying it out loud is the hard part.

I tore the page off the pad and put it in the pocket of my uniform shirt and went down to the yard.

She found me at ten that night in the back bedroom.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed in my uniform pants and an undershirt, with my boots by the door.

She stood in the doorway in her old gray T-shirt.

"You're up," I said.

"I couldn't sleep."

"Come here."

She crossed the room and stopped between my knees.

I put my hands on her waist.

My hands have never been steady around her.

They were steady now.

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