Four Men Crept Into My Childhood Room, So I Kept My Eyes Shut novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hill Road
Bethany buries her father, faces down her ex at the funeral, learns the will gives her and four men equal shares, and lies still while four people enter her room.
My father was lowered into the ground at ten in the morning, and my ex-fiancé chose that hour to tell the town my farm was for sale.
Brock stood at the churchyard gate in a grey suit, with a woman I had never met holding his arm.
She wore a ring on her left hand.
It was not the one I had given back.
"Bethany, I'm so sorry for your loss," he said, and he sounded like he meant it. "I drove down to help with the paperwork. I found you a buyer, and I thought one less thing to carry would be a kindness. They'd like an answer by Friday."
"We never talked about anything," I said. "You texted me that you were done. I was in a hospice hallway."
Nobody in the churchyard moved.
"I only want what's easiest on you," Brock said. "You can't run a farm from a hospital in Columbus."
Four men stepped up behind me at the same time.
I did not turn around.
I knew them by their boots on the gravel.
Clint, who was a deputy now and stood like one.
Abel, who took up half the path.
Eli, who still scuffed his left heel.
Lyle, who was already laughing under his breath, which meant he was angry.
My father had taken each of them in at sixteen or seventeen, off a bus or out of a bad house, and put them to work on our hill.
They had grown up at our kitchen table.
I had left that table at eighteen and said maybe six words to any of them since.
"The farm isn't for sale, Brock," I said. "Take your fiancée home."
He looked at the four of them, and for the first time he stopped smiling.
The lawyer read the will at the kitchen table that afternoon, with the funeral casseroles still stacked along the counter.
My father had left the house and every acre in five equal shares.
One share was mine.
The other four went to the men who stood behind my chair.
"No share can be sold without the other four agreeing," the lawyer said. "That's in writing, and it's very clear."
I looked at Clint.
He looked at the table.
Abel cleared his throat. "Nobody's asking you to stay, Beth."
"I'm not asking anyone anything," I said. "I'll stay a month. I have to pack up Dad's things anyway."
Lyle pulled out a chair and sat on it backwards. "Your room's the same as you left it."
"You touched it?"
"Dusted it," Eli said quickly. "That's all. Dad made us."
My room was on the second floor, over the porch roof, with the bed against the north wall.
The quilt was the same one.
The ribbon box was on the dresser where I had left it.
On the nightstand, on the left side of the bed where I had always slept, someone had set a glass of water.
Nobody had asked me which side.
I stood in the doorway a long time.
I took a shower and listened to the four of them move around the kitchen below, quiet and careful.
When I came out, the hall light had been left on, turned down low.
My father had always left it that way.
I went to bed at eleven in a T-shirt and nothing else, and I left my door open a hand's width, because I could not make myself shut it.
The house settled.
The window let in a strip of moon.
I lay on my left side, facing the wall, and thought about Brock's face at the gate.
Then I thought about four pairs of boots.
I was still thinking about them when I heard the stairs.
The third step from the top had always groaned.
It groaned now, and then the fifth did, and then the floor in the hall.
More than one person.
I made my breathing slow, in for four counts and out for four, the way I used to when I wanted my father to believe I was asleep.
My heart was going so hard I thought it would shake the bed.
The door opened a little wider.
The hall light fell across the floor and was blocked out by shoulders.
Nobody said a word.
I heard the mattress take a weight at the foot of the bed.
I heard someone breathe out, shaky and low.
I kept my eyes shut.
I told myself I would sit up in a second and ask what the hell they thought they were doing.
I did not sit up.
Fingers curled around my knees, warm and rough, and pushed them apart.
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