Reborn to Love Mr. Right novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Dawn on the River

"He said don't bring his daughter," Maisie said on Friday, parking her terrible little car in my father's driveway.

"He never said a word about his daughter bringing herself."

"That's not how sentences work."

"It's how I work."

We went in through the mudroom in our socks.

The kitchen door was half open, and the whole house smelled like butter.

I stopped in the hall with Maisie breathing down my neck and looked through the gap.

My father was at the stove in his cardigan with the hole in the elbow, flipping grilled cheese with my mother's spatula.

Wyatt was at the counter in a pressed shirt, slicing tomatoes.

"Thinner," my father said.

Wyatt sliced thinner.

"She told me something on Monday," my father said, not turning around. "In a hospital chapel. About a life I don't remember."

Wyatt's knife stopped.

"I've been doing arithmetic since," he said. "I'd like to pay you back."

"Sir..."

"Name a number. I've got a checkbook in the drawer by the stove."

"No," Wyatt said.

My father turned around with the spatula.

"No?"

"It didn't happen here," Wyatt said. "You didn't need a bed. That's the whole point. There's nothing to pay."

My father looked at him for a long time over his reading glasses.

Then he slid a grilled cheese onto a plate, cut it on the diagonal, and pushed it across the counter.

"Eat," he said.

Wyatt looked at it.

"You can be stubborn and hungry," my father said, "or you can just be stubborn."

Behind me, Maisie made a noise.

Both men turned.

"Oh, come on," my father said. "I said no daughters."

"I'm not your daughter," Maisie said, walking straight in. "I'm his sister. Hi, Mr. Townsend. I love your house. Is that grilled cheese?"

My father looked past her at me in the hall.

"Bel."

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