He Bought My Father's Debt, So Now He Owns Me novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Storm

We reached the Dog River house at three, with the first real rain coming in horizontal off the water.

The nurse met us at the door.

She was a square capable woman in her fifties, with her sleeves rolled and a flashlight in her belt.

"She's asking for you," she said to me. "She's been asking for an hour."

My mother lay in the room with no windows, the one Cal had picked at the center of the house, on a hospital bed he had had brought in on Thursday.

She wore her good bed jacket.

A lamp on a battery stood beside her, and a thermos, and a rosary she did not use.

"Josephine," she said.

"Mama." I sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. "It's done. They've taken Daddy."

"I know. The nurse has the radio."

"And the commissioner."

"I heard." Her eyes filled. "I heard you buy it."

"It was a dollar."

"I heard that too."

She reached up and touched my face with her thin dry fingers, as she had when I was small.

"Your grandfather built that dock with his hands," she said. "Your father turned it into a trap, and you've turned it back. I'd have liked to see you do it."

"I wish you had."

"I wish a good many things." She looked past me. "Mr. Reese."

Cal stood at the foot of the bed.

He had taken off the wet jacket, and rain was still running from his hair down his neck.

"Mrs. Guidry," he said.

"Will you sit down? You make the room small."

He pulled the chair up.

My mother looked at him for a long time with her grey eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "For what was done to you on our property. I should have said it the day we met. I said a great many other things instead."

"You said what you could," Cal said.

"I'm saying it now."

He bent his head.

"Thank you," he said, in a very low voice.

"My daughter says you have a mother," my mother said.

"Yes, ma'am," Cal said.

"Is she safe in this?"

"The home has a generator and a staff of eleven. I called an hour ago. She's in the day room with the other residents." He hesitated. "She asked the aide for a pen."

"A pen," my mother said.

"She said she had something to write," Cal said.

My mother looked at me.

I did not know what it meant, and neither did he.

By six the wind had a voice.

It was not the moan of the night before.

It was a long rising scream that came across the Dog River in gusts so hard the whole house shuddered.

Something struck the roof and rolled.

The nurse put my mother on her side and drew the quilt up and sat down beside her with a paperback.

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