They Sent Me to Prison for the Family Fire, So I Came Home to Sell the Ranch Out From Under Them novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Return to Sender

We did not find them that day.

Ansel drove the valley road to the cattle guard, then the county road to Wells, and then back.

Iker's number rang out every time we dialed it.

At six he stopped the truck on Fourth Street and cut the engine.

"We'll start again in the morning," he said.

"Josu's got no kin that far out who'd keep a girl against her will.

"He'll go to ground with the cousins in Wells.

"Sunday they'll all be at the mission church."

"And tonight?" I said.

"Tonight you eat," Ansel said.

He heated a can of soup on his grandmother's stove, because I had told him I could not stand to be cooked for.

I sat at the table with my hands round the bowl.

It was a small kitchen.

The lilac scratched at the glass.

The shoebox sat on the counter where he had left it, with the lab paper on top.

He sat down across from me.

He didn't eat.

I could see him arranging what he meant to say, the way a man lays out tools.

"I've been thinking about the kitchen," he said.

"The Thursday one.

"You said I never wrote it, and I never did."

"Ansel."

"Let me say it," he said.

"I have a thing to tell you, and I'd rather it was true than tidy."

I put the spoon down.

"The first letter you sent back," he said.

"It came to my grandmother's, because I'd put her address.

"RETURN TO SENDER, in the guard's printing, and an X through my name, and the envelope still sealed."

"I remember."

"I sat on this step with it for an hour," he said.

"I thought, that's that.

"I'd given her the one chance to say no, and she'd said it.

"I stood up to go in, and I saw that the flap had been stuck back down with a different kind of tape."

He took a breath.

"Someone had opened it first," he said.

"The mail room had read it.

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