He Let Them Think She Was His novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Terms

At dawn Abby sets terms on her own porch: no touching, no coming inside until Jesse says whose child Lottie is. He says he gave his word. At the cattle guard they find Kit and Lottie freezing in a dead car, and Kit says Jesse signed the birth certificate himself.

I slept at my own place that night, in my grandmother's house on the west six hundred and forty.

I didn't sleep much.

At five I gave up and went out to the porch with a cup of coffee, and Jesse's truck was already in my yard.

He was sitting on the bottom step with his hat in his hands.

His boots were wet to the ankle, so he'd been out there a while, and the grass was white with frost.

"Don't get up," I said.

He stayed where he was.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to say, and then you can talk," I said.

"All right."

"You don't touch me."

He looked up.

"And you don't come inside this house until you tell me whose child that is."

"Abby."

"Whose is she, Jesse?"

He turned the hat over once in his hands.

"I gave my word," he said.

"To who?"

"I can't say."

"To her?"

"No."

"Then who?"

He shook his head, and his jaw worked.

I had known that jaw for ten years.

I knew it when he was lying and I knew it when he was ashamed, and I couldn't read it that morning at all.

"Did you sleep with her?"

"I'm not going to answer that on this porch," he said.

"Then you did."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't say anything else."

He stood up slowly.

For a second I thought he'd come up the steps, and I was ready to throw the coffee at him.

He stayed on the bottom step.

"I'll do your chores," he said. "I'll fix whatever's broken. I won't come in."

"I don't want you fixing anything."

"I know."

He put his hat on and walked back to his truck.

I watched him go down the long gravel road to the cattle guard, and his taillights were the only red thing in all that white.

Then they stopped.

He didn't turn around or get out.

His truck sat there with the engine running, and then it pulled slowly onto the shoulder.

I put my cup down and walked down the road in my slippers.

Behind the cattle guard, nosed into the ditch, was the green Subaru.

Frost covered the windshield.

Jesse was already out of his truck and standing beside it, looking in through the glass.

"Move," I said.

I wiped the frost off with my sleeve.

Kit was in the front seat with her head against the window and her jacket over her knees.

In the back, in a car seat, Lottie lay asleep with her hat on her chest.

The engine was off and the gas needle sat on empty.

I hadn't known her name until that second, and I realized I'd been calling her the girl in my head.

Kit opened her eyes and saw me.

She sat up so fast she hit the steering wheel.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. I'll go. I didn't know where else."

"How long have you been here?"

"Since midnight. Mr. Renner's men told me to leave the ranch. I ran out of gas."

"Mr. Renner's men."

"The old one's. I'll move the car."

"Her fingers are cold," Jesse said quietly, reaching in for Lottie's hand.

"Don't," I said.

He stopped.

I unbuckled the little girl myself and lifted her out.

She weighed almost nothing.

She woke up against my shoulder and looked at me with those gray, dark-ringed eyes and didn't cry.

"Horse?" she said.

"Not yet," I said. "Come inside and get warm."

Kit stood in the road with her arms wrapped around herself.

"I didn't want to scare anybody yesterday," she said. "I swear. I had nowhere else."

"You can talk inside," I said.

Then she said the thing that stopped me on the gravel.

"He signed her birth certificate, Mrs. Renner. His own name, in the box for the father."

I turned around.

Jesse was standing very still beside the Subaru.

He didn't say it was a lie.

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