My Father Bet My Year at the Boucherie, So I Signed It Myself and Named the Terms novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: After the Fire
Blake did not answer.
He stood in front of the fire with his hands open at his sides, and for the first time in my life I saw him with nothing to say.
"You held me," Seb said.
"I was thirty-two years old, and I couldn't stand up.
"You put your arm around me in the front pew, and you said, little brother, it's all right, I've got you.
"And she was in the box, Blake, and you knew who had put her there."
"I loved her," Blake said.
"I loved her like a sister."
"You sent a man to find out what she'd found," Seb said.
"She was going to ruin the family," Blake said.
It was out before he could stop it.
I saw him hear himself.
He looked around at the old men, at the long line of silent crews, at the priest with his scarf in his lap.
"She was going to ruin all of us," he said.
"Eight years of a living for every man on this levee.
"I told Andrei to talk to her.
"I told him to stop her car.
"I never told him to leave her in the water."
The old man with the cane said, in a thin, level voice, "You said stop her car."
"I said stop it," Blake said.
"No," said Seb.
"You told him to ask if she was still moving."
Margot had come down off her crate.
She was standing against my leg with both arms around it, the way she had stood at the school gate.
I put my hand on her hair.
The sheriff stood at the back of the crowd.
I had not seen him arrive either.
He was a big gray man in a department parka with his thumbs in his belt, who had come to the fire as every man in St. Martin Parish came to it, with his wife and a thermos.
He had been standing quietly at the edge of the families since the drawings began.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Father Bet My Year at the Boucherie, So I Signed It Myself and Named the Terms are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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