A Ruler in Disguise novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Dead Twelve Years

Dev was sitting on an upturned bucket in the back of the shop when I got home.

The new window glass glowed behind him from the street lamp.

He looked up as I came in and read my face.

"She made you an offer."

"I said no."

"Good," he said, and something in his chest eased.

I sat down on the bucket next to his.

I had been rehearsing how to say it for the whole drive back.

"Dev. She has your picture on the piano."

He did not move.

"She keeps it where she can see it."

"Did she cry?"

"No."

"No," he said, and a humorless breath left him. "She wouldn't."

"Dev, I think she misses you."

"She signed my death notice in two weeks."

I turned to look at him.

He was staring at the floor between his boots.

"The Army sent a chaplain with the letter," he said.

"He told her I was missing, not dead, and there were search teams.

"The State Department would have kept a file open for years if she had asked."

"And she didn't ask?"

"She filed for my shares in the family trust the same week.

"She sold my room's furniture in a month.

"She never wrote to the search team, not once."

"But the picture."

"She can love a picture," Dev said. "A picture doesn't come home and disagree."

His voice was low and very controlled, and that scared me more than if he'd been shouting.

I put my hand on his knee.

"You don't have to be calm for me."

"I'm not calm."

"Then stop pretending."

He looked at me.

The grey of his eyes had gone dark and bright at once.

"Clover," he said. "If I touch you now, I won't be gentle."

"Good."

"I mean it."

"So do I."

He stood and pulled me up and walked me backward into the walk-in cooler at the back of the shop.

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