Wash Her Feet novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Ledge

The hoist went up in the dark, and I kept my eyes on the gate.

Rafe had put me in the cage himself at a quarter to six.

He kissed my forehead, said "Floor thirteen, I'll be right under you," and pulled the lever.

Then he was gone.

The cage rattled up past a floor with no walls, then another, and the wind came through the mesh in cold hard pushes.

I watched the floors go past.

I did not look at the river.

At fourteen, the gate rattled open.

The deck was a gray slab the size of a tennis court, with rebar sticking up in rows and a stack of plywood under a tarp.

There was no wall around it.

The first light was coming up pink over the water, and the whole city lay below us.

Shelby stood at the far edge with her back to me.

She was in her scrubs, the pale blue ones, and she was barefoot.

She was standing on the lip of the slab with her toes over nothing.

"Shelby," I said.

My voice came out thin.

"Don't come closer," she said, not turning. "Stay where you are."

I stayed.

My legs were doing something I could not control, so I put my back against a steel column and held on to it.

"You came," she said.

"You asked on your mother."

"I did."

"What do you want me to see?"

She lifted one arm, slowly, and pointed.

I looked where she pointed, because I had to, and my stomach went over.

Far down and to the left, past the river bridge, there was a gap in the rows of rooftops.

A square of weeds and gravel and a chain-link fence.

"That's the lot," Shelby said. "Where it stood."

"Your mother's building."

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