They Sent Me to Prison for the Family Fire, So I Came Home to Sell the Ranch Out From Under Them novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: One Year in Advance
We walked home.
Nobody said we should, and nobody stopped us.
It was nine blocks from the bank to Fourth Street, down Idaho and across at Silver, with the parade tuning up behind us.
We went hand in hand, in plain sight, through a town that had stopped pretending not to see.
A man at the corner took off his hat.
A woman in a doorway said, "God bless you, girl," and I said thank you and meant it.
On Fourth Street the lilac stood against the sky as a bare stick.
The house was cold.
I stood in the front room with my coat on and looked at the boards where I had slept my first night out.
Ansel shut the door and leaned against it with his hat still on.
"I don't have a job," he said.
"I know that," I said.
"I haven't got a truck with tires on it."
"I know that, too."
"I wanted you to hear it before you said anything else," he said.
"I've got a house that isn't mine and a box of letters to a woman who didn't answer."
"Ansel," I said.
"And when you've slept," he said, "you might want a city, or a coast, or somewhere nobody looks at you across a rail."
"Is that what you think?" I asked.
"It's what I'd want if it had been done to me here," he said.
I hung my coat on the nail by the door.
Then I turned to face him.
"I'm renting your house," I said.
He did not move.
"I'm renting it for a year," I said.
"The co-op treasurer is paying me for the widow's paperwork, and I'm paying you twelve months in advance at the going rate.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of They Sent Me to Prison for the Family Fire, So I Came Home to Sell the Ranch Out From Under Them are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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