My Stepmother Sold Me to the Alpha Who Hates My Father's Name, and the Child He Wants Is the Proof That Clears It novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: First Bloom
The first apple bloom came on the twenty-sixth of April, and I picked that day at four in the morning, lying awake with my hand on my belly.
I had told no one.
I had not told Ned.
He had asked me once, as I had said he might, on the morning he hung the new rope across the bridge, and I had said, *Ask me at the bloom*.
He had not asked again.
He had come to my springhouse on the nights I asked and left before light.
I got up at five.
I put on my good dress, the green one, which I had let out at the seams on Wednesday, and my father's barn coat over it.
It would not button.
I did not care.
I walked down to the creek in the grey light.
The bridge hung over the water in the mist, and the new rope was dark with dew.
I stood at the near end of it.
My father had never let me cross.
I had crossed it in December, in the snow, without knowing why.
I put my hand on the rope and looked at the far bank, at the flat white rock where a girl had died.
There were violets growing at the foot of it.
They had come up in the first week of April, a thick blue ring, and I had not planted them.
"Daddy," I said.
The creek ran.
"I'm going to do a thing today. I'd like you to know.
I'm going to say yes to a man who thought you did it."
The water talked.
"He's sorry. He's the sorriest man I've ever met.
I don't think he'll ever stop."
I stood a long time.
"I think you'd like him," I said. "I think you'd tell him to mend the rope."
I took my hand off the bridge.
I did not cross it.
I walked home up the hollow, and I got in the Honda, and I drove up the mountain to the Knob alone.
The orchard stood in bloom.
I had not known it could look like that.
The terraces ran up the south shoulder of the mountain in long curved rows, and every tree was white.
It was thick as snow.
It hung in the early light, a great soft cloud of petals, and the whole hillside hummed.
I stopped the Honda at the gate and got out.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Stepmother Sold Me to the Alpha Who Hates My Father's Name, and the Child He Wants Is the Proof That Clears It are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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