Plowed by My Stepfather novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Dean's Voice

Dean's POV

She didn't say a word on the drive home from the Grange.

She held her phone in her lap with both hands and looked out the window at the fence posts.

At the farm she got out, and went into the house, and shut the door.

I stood in the yard for ten minutes.

Then I got back in the truck and drove to Des Moines.

I had never been to the Lindqvist building, but I knew it from the sign on the highway.

It was after six on a Saturday, and one window on the third floor was lit.

I rode the elevator up, and the door at the end of the hall said KENT LINDQVIST, LOAN OFFICER.

I had my phone in my shirt pocket with the recorder running.

I'd thumbed it on in the elevator, and my hand wasn't steady.

Kent looked up from his desk. His smile came on a half-second slow.

"Dean. Hey. Is Gretchen all right?"

"Did you block my number on her phone?"

He didn't pretend not to understand me.

He leaned back in his chair.

I watched him decide what kind of man to be.

He chose the reasonable one.

"I want you to know I never meant it to go this far," he said.

"Did you."

"Yes. I did. December second."

I stood in the doorway and didn't move.

"She was drowning," Kent said. "Every time her phone lit up with your name, she went gray."

"Brenda didn't even want her told. You know that. I made it easier."

"Nine messages."

"I never listened to them."

"They said her mother was asking for her."

"She'd have gone back to that farm." For the first time his voice sharpened.

"She'd have gone back and never left, and my father needed that land, Dean."

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