He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: Her Father's House
I went to the shop at first light with the key in my bodice and found my father in his chair.
He had not been to bed.
The stove had gone out, and he sat in the cold with a bottle in his lap and his cap on the floor.
Behind the counter, Hallgerd's high desk stood empty.
"She's gone to the kirk," he said. "To pray."
"She sent for me."
"I know."
He did not look at me.
"Father, what is in the iron box?"
His hands closed on the bottle.
"Deeds," he said. "Old receipts."
"Hallgerd gave me the key," I said.
"She'd no right," he said.
"She had every right. She wrote it," I said.
He looked up then.
His face was grey and swollen, and the eyes in it were a frightened boy's.
"Wrote what?"
"I don't know yet." I sat down on the meal barrel in front of him, so that our eyes were level. "I mean to find out. I'm going to open that box, Father, and read the page that isn't damp, and I'm going to read it aloud to the man who owns the book."
"You'll not."
"I will."
"Danika, listen to me." He leaned forward, and I smelled the bottle on him. "You've never wanted for anything in this house. I kept you warm. I kept you fed. When your mother died, I stood by you."
"You wrote her doctor's bill in the book."
He stopped.
"I found it at fourteen," I said. "You never knew I found it. I paid it, and I've been paying such things ever since, and I never once said a word, because I thought you were a hard man who couldn't help it."
"I couldn't," he said.
"You could. You could have written it off. You'd have lost a pound," I said.
"It wasn't a pound that frightened me," he said.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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