My Future Doesn't Have Room for You novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Pie on the Porch

On Saturday morning, Janet came up Esther's front walk carrying a pie.

I saw her from the study window.

She wore her good camel coat and a scarf, and her hair was done.

Gary trailed three steps behind her with his hands in his pockets.

It was nine o'clock, and half the street was out shoveling.

"She's brought witnesses," Esther said from the doorway behind me.

"What?"

"Look at the sidewalk."

The couple across the road had stopped digging.

The man two doors down was leaning on his shovel, and the mail carrier had slowed his truck.

Janet could have come any time that week, when nobody was watching.

She had chosen a Saturday and a pie.

"Do I have to go out there?" I said.

"No," Esther said. "But I think you should hear what she says to a street."

I opened the front door and stepped onto the porch.

Esther came out behind me with her phone in her hand and her thumb on the screen.

"Hallie." Janet's voice rang out, bright and loud. "Sweetheart. I made your favorite. Lemon meringue."

"I don't like lemon."

She faltered for half a second.

Then she kept smiling.

"We've all said things this week that we didn't mean. I'm your family. You're eighteen, you're scared, and I haven't been the aunt I should have been. I want you to come home."

"No, thank you."

"Please. For your mother's sake."

"Don't use my mother," I said.

The street was very quiet.

Janet's smile thinned, and she lowered her voice, but not by much.

"Honey, you're being manipulated. That woman has had her eye on our house for years."

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