The Beast on Her Leash novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Rules

Bram lies about the clipping, they trade rules, and his aunt hands over the job; then Lyle Crowe's SUV pulls onto the dock road.

I did not move.

I did not touch the clipping, and I did not say a word about the girl in the picture.

If I said my name out loud in that room, I would be off the porch in a minute, and Lyle would know by lunch.

"What's that?" I asked, as lightly as I could.

Bram Crowe looked at the wall and then at me.

He looked at me a second too long.

"A wreck the yard towed," he said. "Somebody pinned it up. I never took it down."

"Eleven years is a long time to leave something up."

"It's a nice pin."

Either he had never really looked at the girl in that photo, or he had looked at her a great deal.

I could not tell which one scared me more.

"All right," I said. "Rules."

"I don't do rules."

"Everybody does rules. Yours just aren't written down."

He folded his arms, which took a while because of the arms.

"Fine. One. Nobody touches me."

"Done."

"Two. Nobody calls me boy, buddy, or chief."

"Those are your brother's words."

"Three." His jaw tightened. "We don't talk about Lyle in my house."

"Done," I said. "That one I like even better than you do."

He frowned and found none.

"Mine," I said. "I'm here at eight every morning. If I'm late, I text, and so do you."

"I don't text."

"You'll learn. Second, nobody yells at anybody, including me."

"I never yell at women."

"You threw a leash at one."

"That was a leash. It wasn't loud."

I almost laughed, and I caught it just in time.

"Third," I said. "If I put my hand flat on a table, it means step outside for five minutes."

"You go because you want to," I said. "Nobody follows you, and nobody chases you down."

"And if I don't want to?"

"Then you stay and I stop talking. It's your call every single time."

He studied my face for a long moment.

"That's the whole job?" he said. "That's what my brother pays you for?"

"Your brother pays me to make you easier to be around. I'd call that two jobs."

Moose thumped his tail once on my boot.

The sound seemed to decide something, because Bram unfolded his arms.

"Show me what you've got," he said.

We started with the front door.

At nine, a delivery driver came down the dock road with a box.

Bram opened the screen door.

"Sign," the driver said, and held out a tablet.

Bram signed.

"Thanks. Have a good one," he said, in a voice like a closing gate.

The driver left faster than he came.

"Not bad," I said.

"He ran."

"He ran because you said 'thanks' with your eyebrows down. Do it again."

"There's no other box."

"Pretend. Open the door."

He opened the door.

I held an imaginary box in front of his chest.

"Thanks," he said. "Have a good one."

"Eyebrows."

"They're up."

"One is up. The other one is thinking about murder."

Bram rubbed his face with one huge hand, and when he took it away, he was almost smiling.

"Again," he said.

We did it half a dozen times, until the eyebrow stopped being a threat.

I remember thinking he had a better laugh than anybody had a right to, and hating that I thought it.

At ten past ten, somebody knocked on the porch rail with a cane.

"Is anyone dead yet?" a voice called.

A tiny white-haired woman came around the side of the boathouse in a pink cardigan.

She was seventy-eight years old and about as tall as my shoulder.

She carried a pocketful of butterscotch, and she gave one to Moose before she gave one to either of us.

"Aunt Fern," Bram said, and his whole body changed.

I watched his shoulders come down an inch.

"You're alive," Fern told me, and poked my arm with her cane. "Excellent. The last two quit before the kettle boiled."

"I haven't seen a kettle."

"It's in the big house. You'll have lunch there, and so will he. He doesn't cook anything that isn't a sandwich."

"I cook eggs," Bram said.

"You cook one egg, forty times."

She sat down on the porch swing and patted the seat beside her.

I sat.

She was warm, and she smelled like talcum powder and wool, and for no reason I could name, my throat ached.

"I'll tell you the whole thing so nobody lies to you," Fern said.

"Aunt Fern."

"Hush. My nephew Lyle is running for the state senate."

I kept my face still.

"He announces it at the Founders' Dinner on December twelfth at the Carlisle Hotel. Four hundred people. The county executive. Cameras."

"And Bram is invited."

"Bram is required to stand next to him and shake hands."

"And not break anyone's nose." She gave Bram a look over the top of her glasses.

"I said the boy needs a trainer, not a lawyer. Lyle thought that was very funny."

"It was a joke," Bram said.

"Jokes are how Lyle says what he means," said Fern. "I got you the trainer anyway."

She patted my knee.

"You have two months, dear," she said. "Lyle is coming down shortly to see how you're doing."

I looked up the dock road.

A black SUV was turning off the highway.

It rolled down the hill slowly.

It stopped at the end of the dock, and the driver's door opened.

A tall man in a navy coat stepped out and looked straight at me, with a wide, easy smile.

"There she is," said Lyle Crowe.

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