I Slept With a Stranger at the Wedding, and Monday He Was My Boss novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Night Before

Dane's POV

On the night of the ninth of July, Lottie asked me to take her to see the peaches.

She asked me.

She stood in the kitchen door in her yellow nightgown with the rabbit under her arm and said it looking straight at my face.

"Dane, can we go see the peaches?"

I had my coffee halfway to my mouth, and I set it down very carefully.

She had been speaking to Katrina for six weeks and to nobody else.

My mother, at the sink, did not turn around.

I saw her hands stop in the dishwater.

"It's past her bedtime," Mama said, to the window, in a voice that wasn't hers.

"It's a half hour," I said.

"I'll carry her."

I picked Lottie up, and she put her arm around my neck, and we went out the screen door and down the porch steps into the evening.

The sun had gone behind the hills, and the whole sky over the orchard was apricot and dove gray.

The rows ran away from us in long soft lines, and every tree was heavy with fruit that was weeks from ready, hard and green-gold and fuzzed with light.

I walked her down the nearest row.

She reached up and touched one.

"Is it ready?" she said.

"Not yet.

"Two more weeks."

"Mommy said they're ready when they smell like the dance."

I stopped walking.

"She said that?" I said.

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