Daddy, Can You Teach Me Some Naughty Night Things? novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Note with My Mother's Name

Lyle arrives with a note carrying her late mother's name and a number at the bottom, and Sage will not sign it.

Lyle Kenyon's truck came up the lane at noon with dust rolling off the tires.

He parked in front of the house and got out holding a folded paper.

Wayne was already on the porch. I had a bucket of feed in one hand and my braid coming loose.

"Morning, Wayne," Lyle said. "Sage."

He unfolded the paper and held it up so we could both see the number at the bottom.

"Forty-one thousand five hundred dollars," he said. "Due Friday."

My hand tightened on the bucket handle.

I did the math before I could stop myself. That was more than we cleared in a spring of foals.

Wayne took the paper and read it without changing expression.

"I'll have it Friday," he said.

"I know you will," Lyle said. "You always pay with something."

He smiled at that.

Then he looked at me, up and down, slow.

"You've grown up pretty, Sage," he said.

Wayne stepped off the porch and put himself between us.

"Leave," he said.

Lyle laughed and got back in his truck.

He drove off down the lane, and Wayne stood there until the dust settled.

Then he crushed the paper in his fist and walked to the barn.

He didn't say a word to me.

I followed him anyway.

He was in the tack room with the paper flattened on a barrel, staring at the bottom of it.

I came around the barrel and looked.

My mother's signature was there. Carol Gentry. Dated two years ago.

"Why did my mother owe Lyle Kenyon money?" I asked.

"She didn't," Wayne said.

"That's her name."

"That's a lie I can't prove."

He said it flat.

I reached past him and took the note off the barrel.

His hand closed on my wrist.

He held it. Not hard enough to hurt, but long enough that I felt him choose the paper over me.

"Let go," I said.

He let go.

I rubbed my wrist and saw the red mark his fingers had left.

Wayne looked at it, and then at the floor, and couldn't meet my eyes.

The barn door scraped open behind us.

Dessa Kenyon came in with a feed ledger under her arm.

"Daddy sent me to check the books before Friday," she said. "Hope that's all right."

She set the ledger on the barrel next to the note.

"This place should be run by someone who knows what they're doing," she said.

Then she glanced at the office door.

"Your name's on something in there, isn't it, Sage?"

My face went hot. I kept it still.

Wayne picked up the note and the ledger and walked out.

Dessa smiled at me and followed him.

I stood in the tack room alone and listened to my own breathing.

Then I went to the house.

Wayne was in the kitchen, and the stove door was open, and the note was in the fire.

I crossed the room and pulled it out.

The corner was black and curling, but my mother's name was still there.

I smoothed it flat on the counter.

Wayne watched me do it and said nothing.

"You'd rather burn it than tell me," I said.

He shut the stove door.

I walked out of the kitchen with the paper in my hand and his silence behind me.

I walked back into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and laid the note flat.

I traced my mother's forged signature with my finger.

She had never written a check in her life without reading it twice.

Headlights swept across the window.

Hank's truck pulled into the yard, early.

I stood up with the note in my hand.

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