They Sent Me to Prison for the Family Fire, So I Came Home to Sell the Ranch Out From Under Them novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Kitchen

I drove the spare truck up the ranch road at midnight with the lab paper on the seat beside me.

Ansel rode in the passenger side with his hat on his knee.

He had asked once if I wanted him to wait at the cattle guard, and I had said no, and he had not asked again.

The kitchen light was on.

My father sat at the table in his undershirt with a glass of milk in front of him, and my mother stood at the stove with her back to the room, doing nothing at it.

They looked up when I came through the screen door, and my father's face went through three things quickly and settled on tired.

"Maite," he said.

"It's after midnight."

"I know what time it is."

I crossed the linoleum and laid the sheet down on the table between the milk and the salt.

I turned it so he could read it right way up.

"Read the top line," I said.

He didn't look down.

He looked at me, and his big hands lay on either side of the paper without touching it.

My mother had turned from the stove.

I saw her see the letterhead from across the room, and her hand went to the back of a chair.

"Josu," she said.

"Where did she get that?" my father said.

His voice was very quiet.

"Who gave it to her?"

"A woman who kept a copy in a coffee tin for five years because she couldn't burn it," I said.

"Read it."

He read it.

His lips moved on the numbers.

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