Five Years Gone, She Walked Back In, So I Walked Out novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Cooper's Point

My grandmother's cabin sat at the end of Cooper's Point, where the road turned to gravel and the lake started.

It had one bedroom, a wood stove and a porch that leaned.

It had been mine since the funeral, and I had not slept in it for two years.

By dark I had swept out the mouse droppings and lit the stove, and Poppy was eating buttered noodles at the table with her rabbit on her lap.

"Are we camping?" she asked.

"Something like it."

"Is Daddy coming?"

"I don't know, baby."

She chewed for a while.

"The lady was nice," she said. "She cut my toast."

I put a spoon down very gently.

"She was nice," I said. "That's all right."

My phone rang at eight, and I let it ring twice before I looked.

My father.

He had called six times since noon. I had answered none of them.

I picked up, because Poppy was at the table and I wanted my voice calm for her.

"Hello, Dad."

"Where are you?"

"Grandma's cabin."

"I heard what happened." His voice was fast and thin. "Sawyer's mother called me. Stevie, you have to go back tonight."

"I'm not going back."

"You can't leave that house. It's your house. You're his wife."

"He let go of me, Dad. He let go of me so he could carry her ice."

"Don't tell me that's a reason to throw away a marriage."

I held the phone away from my ear for a moment.

My father was not a loud man. He had raised me on his own after my mother died, and in all that time he had never once told me to stay somewhere that hurt me.

"Why do you care so much?" I said. "You haven't been in that house in five years, and yesterday you walked out the back door the second Lorna walked in."

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