The New Neighbor Mowed My Lawn the Week My Divorce Went Through novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Stairs
Lena's POV
"I'm done," I said, on his deck, with my cheek on his shoulder and my legs hanging over his knees. "Ask me."
"Are you happy?"
"Yes," I said.
"That's it?"
"That's all of it," I said. "Yes. I'm happy. It took me thirty-seven years and a lawn mower."
He laughed into my hair and held me until the mosquitoes drove us inside.
The storm came in the following Saturday.
It had been hot all day, with a thick yellow sky, and at suppertime the first thunder rolled in over Hilliard, long and low.
Then the rain came down so hard that it bounced off the porch rail.
Soon after there was a loud crack from somewhere down the court, and every light in my house went out.
I was in the kitchen in a T-shirt and underwear, eating cereal from the box.
The refrigerator shuddered and stopped humming, and the house went dark.
"Lena?" Tyler called from the living room. "Is that you or the whole street?"
"The whole street!"
I went out to the front hall and looked through the glass sidelight beside the door.
The court was black from end to end.
Not a window showed a light, not a porch lamp, not the streetlight, and the rain came down silver every time lightning lit it.
Tyler came out of the living room with a phone flashlight and a box of kitchen matches.
"I found candles," he said. "The birthday kind."
"There's a drawer of real ones under the stairs."
We found them, the fat white emergency candles that Greg had bought in bulk after one blackout and never touched.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The New Neighbor Mowed My Lawn the Week My Divorce Went Through are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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