His Uncle's Obsession: After I Seduced Him novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: The Notebook

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

The hound lay down across my boots.

"Anything," I said.

"Anything."

"Then here's the first one. How long did you know the setups were mine?"

He didn't answer right away.

He went back down the loft stairs instead.

I heard the truck door, then his boots on the steps again.

He came up holding an old cigar box with a rubber band around it.

He set it on the bed beside me and stepped back.

Inside was a silver stopwatch with a cracked crystal.

Under it was a green spiral notebook, soft as a dishrag from being handled.

"Three years," he said. "Since the spring you took over the #17's box."

I opened the notebook.

Every page was a race.

The track and the date across the top in his big slanted handwriting.

Then lap times, columns of them, hundreds of them, in pencil.

Then, at the bottom of each page, his guesses.

Front springs softer. Track bar up a quarter. She's freeing it up for the long run.

In the corner of every page he'd written two letters.

E.B.

I turned the pages for a long time.

Charlotte. Martinsville. Richmond. Darlington. Bristol.

Three years of Sundays.

"Where were you sitting?" I said.

"The grandstands. Wherever a ticket was cheap and the view was good. I bought my own seat like everybody else."

"With a stopwatch."

"It was Daddy's. He timed me with it when I was fourteen."

"And you sat up there and timed my car."

"It was the only racing I was allowed."

I looked up at him.

"That's the honest answer?"

"That's half." He rubbed the back of his neck. "The other half is it was the best thing on the track. The #17 drove like a different car the week you took over. I wanted to know why."

"Why didn't you call me?"

"Because I was the Tillery who signed a paper, and you were Crews's engineer. And Crews's girl." He shrugged. "A man in the stands with a notebook doesn't call anybody. He writes it down."

I turned to the back.

Phoenix, last November.

The lap times ran normal for three hundred laps.

Then the last ten were circled, hard enough to tear the paper.

Under them he'd written:

Not her setup.

My throat closed up.

"You knew," I said. "Before they ever inspected it."

"I knew your cars never had to cheat. I said so the first night."

"You said it like a guess."

"It wasn't a guess. I just couldn't tell you how I knew without sounding like this." He gestured at the cigar box. "A man with a box."

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