Chapter 13: Look Outside

I didn't want to look outside.

I did it anyway, with Giles's arm still across my waist.

Dean's silver sedan was parked crooked at the curb.

Dean stood in the middle of Phyllis's lawn, under the porch light, with his phone held up at arm's length.

Shelby leaned on the car door with a second phone, filming him filming the house.

"Giles," I said.

He was awake before I finished the word.

He looked out the window once, pulled on his jeans and reached for the doorknob.

"Stay here," he said.

"No."

"Tillie."

"He did this to my name in front of three hundred people. I'm not hiding behind a door from him."

He looked at me for a second and handed me his shirt.

I buttoned it to my throat and followed him down the stairs.

Dean's voice came through the front window before we got to the porch.

"I'm live right now, everybody. My fiancee was taken from me this week by a man she hadn't seen in five years."

"She's confused. She was pressured into a wedding in under a day."

"I just want her to walk out here and tell me she's all right."

Giles opened the door.

Dean swung the phone toward us and smiled.

"There she is. Tillie, tell them you're okay, baby."

I walked down the porch steps barefoot on the cold boards.

I took the phone out of his hand, which surprised him enough that he let me.

I held it up to my own face.

"This is Tillie Dougherty," I said. "My legal name is Tillie Archbold since yesterday at eleven forty."

"I'm standing on my mother-in-law's lawn at three in the morning in my husband's shirt."

"Nobody pressured me. Nobody is holding me."

"Dean is the one who won't leave."

Dean made a grab for the phone.

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