A Ruler in Disguise novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Whose Name

I walked out of my own shop and did not come back until dark.

I drove to Thunderbolt with the windows down and my hands locked on the wheel.

My father lived in a one-room house on stilts at the end of a shell road, with a rusted shrimp boat tied up behind it.

He was on the porch cleaning a net when I came up the steps.

He was sixty-eight and he had a cough that never fully left.

"You look like you got hit by a truck," he said.

"Dad, six years ago. The Harlow Foundation. Do you remember the scholarship?"

"Course I do. Best day of my life."

"Did anyone from there ever talk to you?"

He set down the net slowly.

"A woman in pearls came out here that same week," he said.

"Real nice. She said the foundation covers medical hardship for the families of its scholars.

"She paid the hospital in full."

"The forty thousand dollars?"

"All of it. I never could thank her enough."

I sat down on the porch step.

I thought about a woman in pearls standing in this little house, paying off my father's lungs, so I would sign without reading.

I put my head on my knees.

"Clover?"

"I'm okay, Dad."

"You're not."

"No," I said. "But I will be."

He didn't ask.

He just put a rough hand on the back of my head and left it there, smelling of salt and diesel.

By the time I drove back to Savannah, I had a plan.

It was a small one, and a stubborn one, and entirely mine.

The shop was dark.

Dev was in the apartment upstairs, standing at the window with the lights off.

He turned when I came in.

"You walked out," he said.

"I did."

"I didn't follow."

"I noticed."

"You needed to be somewhere I wasn't."

"I was angry at you, too," I said, shutting the door.

"You stood there so calmly.

"As if I was going to put you in a drawer and file you."

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