He Called My Inheritance a Forgery in Front of Three Hundred Guests, Then Took Every Blow Meant for Me novel · Chapter 22 of 40

Chapter 22: The Ice House

"What does it open?" I said.

Chloe shook her head.

"He didn't say. He just said you'd know."

The guard was looking away down the road, pretending not to hear.

Chloe hugged me hard, flour and all.

Then she ran back up the hill before anyone could see her gone.

I stood at the gateposts with my father's key in my fist.

I knew it.

I'd known it the second it touched my palm.

There's an old stone ice house in the orchard, half sunk into the hillside, older than the main house.

When I was a girl, my father kept it locked with an iron padlock the size of my hand.

He said it was full of rats and broken glass.

He kept the key on his own ring.

I'd never once seen inside.

I took a room at a motel in Lee that smelled of carpet cleaner.

At eleven, Kendrick's black car pulled into the lot with the lights off.

"You came," I said, getting in.

"You texted me a picture of a key."

We parked on the farm road below the orchard and climbed the stone wall in the dark.

He went over one-handed.

I didn't ask how much it hurt.

The orchard was all bare branches and frozen grass.

The main house was black on the hill above us, except for one light in the library window.

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