His Favorite Shirt novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Nolan Does Not Take the Money

Nolan's POV

I was splicing a dock line in the boathouse loft when I heard the stairs.

Nobody comes up those stairs but my mother, and my mother knocks on the post at the bottom.

This was a different step, light and quick, and I knew it before I turned around.

Seven years had changed nothing about the way Brielle Pemberton climbed a ladder.

"Nolan."

"Mrs. Pemberton," I said.

"Don't." She stopped at the top. "You never called me that."

"You never used it when you were here."

She stood in the lamplight in a white sweater with her arms folded. She had always looked best in plain things.

I put the line down.

That summer she had come to the lodge for a month while her husband worked in Chicago.

She had rented the end cottage, the one Thora was sleeping in now.

In August she told me she was leaving him, and I believed her.

On the last Friday I woke up at dawn, and her key was on my pillow and the cottage was empty.

I had not seen her since, not until Saturday, on the lawn with sixty guests around her.

"What do you want?" I said.

"I want you to leave it alone."

"I'm not touching it."

"You gave Thora the cottage. You gave her the ring." She stepped closer. "You turned up the speaker for her."

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