Plowed by My Stepfather novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Pie

Orrin was at the kitchen door at seven the next morning with a cherry pie.

I had slept four hours in my childhood bed, and I could still feel Dean on my skin.

"Gretchen, honey. I won't stay long."

He came in as he always had.

He sat down in my mother's chair at the head of the table.

I poured him coffee because my mother would have.

"That was a hell of a storm," he said. "Hail on the Henderson place and on mine. I drove out last night to make sure you were all right."

"We were fine."

"I could see that." He stirred his coffee and smiled at the cup. "Your lights were on in the machine shed."

The kitchen got very quiet.

"I didn't want to intrude," Orrin said.

"You were in the lane."

"I was." He nodded. "And I've been thinking about it all night."

"Say what you came to say."

"Kent is a good boy. He made a mistake, he knows it, and he'd take you back tomorrow."

"No."

"Let him. Take him back, Gretchen, and I'll extend the note. Two years, no interest. Brenda would be glad of it."

"And if I don't?"

He sighed, almost sadly.

"Then June first is June first. And this county has a long memory about a widow's husband and her daughter."

I looked at him for a long moment.

He had held my hand at my mother's grave.

"Take your pie," I said.

"Gretchen."

"Take it and get out of her kitchen."

He stood up slowly and buttoned his jacket.

I picked up the pie and held it out to him.

He took it.

At the screen door he turned and said, in the same warm voice, "Think about Kent."

Then he was gone, and his truck went down the lane.

The porch door creaked behind me.

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