Chapter 17: The Lamp at Lake Wren

I took the phone from Monty's hand, and I did not read it.

"I waited," I said. "Three weekends, in December, in Bree's car at the end of your driveway."

"I know," Monty said. "I know now."

"What are you going to do?"

"The trust papers. All of them. I'll read every page, and I'll have the house out of her hands before Monday noon." His voice shook.

"I'm not asking you for anything, Selah. I'm telling you what I'm going to do."

I gave the phone back to him.

"Do it right," I said.

He nodded, and he got back into his car.

Bree took Kip's mother home with her, with the afghan still around her shoulders.

Kip stood by his truck with the keys in his hand.

I walked over and stood in front of him.

"Take me to the lake," I said.

"Selah."

"You have a place there. Your father's cabin, on the far shore."

"It's cold. The stove hasn't been lit since September."

"Then light it."

We got there at dusk.

The cabin sat on the west shore, behind a stand of birches, a single room with a loft and a woodstove.

He lit the stove first.

Then he took a brass lamp off the shelf and filled it from a can, with his back to me.

The wick caught.

He set the lamp in the window that faced the water.

"It's the lamp from the hospital volunteer room," he said. "They let me keep it when the wing closed."

He glanced at me.

"I never turned it on while I read to you. You had no use for light."

"I have a use for it now."

I took off his coat and laid it on the chair.

"Thirty days," I said. "No one touches me until I decide."

"I remember."

"I've decided."

He didn't move.

"You said not yet," he said, very low.

"It's been a day. It's been ten years." I took a step.

"Kip. You think I'll leave when I've had enough of being angry."

"Yes."

"I'm not leaving. I'm standing in your father's cabin asking you to put your hands on me."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My First Love Returned, His Stand-In Begged Me to Stay from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.