He Chose Her So I Left Carrying His Heir novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Lake House

"It's your house," I said. "You can't leave it."

Trudy was already dragging a duffel bag out of the hall closet.

"It's a house," she said. "You're a person. Pack."

I stood in the doorway of the back room, where I'd lived for three years, and looked at the desk with my laptop on it and no work left to open.

My mother's quilt was on the bed.

My nineteen hundred dollars was in the envelope in my coat.

That was everything.

"Trudy, if I go, they'll still call in the loan."

"Probably."

"Then why are you coming?"

She straightened up with her glasses pushed into her hair.

"Because that woman stood on my sidewalk and called you a mistake to tidy up," she said. "And I'm sixty-four years old, and I don't have anything left that I'm afraid of losing."

The woman from number twelve brought a casserole in a foil pan and didn't ask any questions.

The two students from upstairs carried my mattress down and tied it to the roof of the pickup.

The man with the daughter's backpack held the passenger door shut while Trudy slammed it twice.

Nobody said Odette Draycott's name out loud.

We left at two.

The rust-red pickup took the hill out of the city in second gear, shaking the whole way.

Trudy drove with both hands.

"My sister's cabin," she said. "Port Ansel, on the lake. Two hours north, if this truck doesn't die. Nobody's lived in it since she passed."

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