Daddy, Can You Teach Me Some Naughty Night Things? novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Man on the Dam

The man with the nail gun was Doyle Hendry, Wayne's cousin, and the work order pinned under his hand was signed with my mother's name.

Doyle set the nail gun down on the dam frame.

"Sage," he said. "Wayne knows you're out here?"

He said it like he was the one who caught me.

I didn't answer him. I walked to the frame and pulled the work order off the roofing nail.

I held it flat under the truck light.

My mother's name sat at the bottom, the C thin and unfinished where the pen had lifted too soon.

The date at the top was from this April. Two years after we buried her.

Hank came around the truck with a page from the county book in his hand.

He held it under the light beside the work order.

Two signatures. The same unfinished C. One dated the week my mother was buried.

"That's the old one," Hank said. "That's the one they copied from."

Doyle looked at both pages and didn't say anything.

"Lyle brings the papers already signed," he said finally. "I just nail them up."

"How long?" I asked.

"Been doing it since before Carol took sick."

"Who signs them?" I said.

Doyle pointed at the clipboard hanging off the dam frame.

A green pen was clipped to it.

I pulled the April ledger page from my pocket and held it beside the work order.

The same green ink. The same unfinished C.

Doyle looked at the two pages together and his jaw worked once.

"I watched Dessa sign that April one at Lyle's kitchen table," he said. "She used that green pen off the feed bill."

A hot, bright satisfaction went through me. Dessa had sat in my kitchen and lied to my face, and now her own father's hired man had put a pen and a table and a month behind it.

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