Plowed by My Stepfather novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Smear

I read the post standing in the kitchen with Dean at my shoulder, and he read it all the way down to the comments.

It came from a page called Harlan Springs Neighbors.

It had a photograph of Dean and my mother on their wedding day, cropped so that I wasn't in it.

It said a forty-four-year-old hired man had "groomed a grieving girl" and moved in on a farm that wasn't his.

It asked the county to wonder how long he had been watching her.

Under it, two hundred people had written prayers.

Some of them had written worse.

"You were hired the summer I left for Ames," I said. "I was eighteen and gone."

"It doesn't matter that it's false," Dean said. "It matters that it's got my face on it."

He kissed my hair and went out to the yard.

I thought he was going to the machine shed.

At five the next morning I woke alone in my bed, and his side was cold.

His truck was gone from the yard.

His flannel shirts were gone from the hooks by the door.

There was a note under the salt shaker, in square carpenter's letters.

It said: Let them hate me and not the farm. Plant without me. I'll send what I make. D.

I put my boots on over my bare feet and drove my car out of the lane faster than my mother ever let me.

He bought coffee at the gas station on Route 9 every morning, and had for nine years.

His truck was at the second pump.

It was Saturday, and the place was full.

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