Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Spruce

The surveyors' white pickup was parked on my grandmother's lawn when we turned onto Mill Road.

Right on the grass, with its tires in the snow.

Deena's car was behind it.

Celine saw it from my back seat and made a small sound.

Two men in orange vests were walking the yard with a tripod and a bundle of wooden stakes.

One of them was already under the spruce.

The spruce was a hundred years old and taller than the barn.

My grandfather had strung the first lights on it the winter my father was born.

The man drove a stake into the frozen ground at its roots with a rubber mallet, and tied a strip of pink tape to the top.

I was out of the car before Bennet had finished parking.

My grandmother was on the porch in her coat and boots, her arms folded.

Deena stood beside her with a clipboard, explaining something in her patient voice.

"Mother, it's just measurements. Nobody's doing anything today."

"They're doing it to my tree," my grandmother said.

Then Deena saw me.

Then she saw Celine getting out of my car, with her mascara still smeared from the lobby, and her face changed.

"What are you doing with her?"

Celine didn't answer.

She came and stood next to me on the bottom step.

"Grandma," I said. "I need you to see something. And I need Deena to watch you see it."

I took out my phone.

I held it out to my grandmother, the screenshot open.

She pushed her reading glasses down out of her hair and read it.

She read it twice.

She didn't need to.

Then she lifted her eyes to her daughter.

"You were going to let me find out from the bulldozer," she said.

Deena went white.

She turned on Celine.

"You went through my phone."

"You sold Grandma's house to a liar," Celine said. Her voice shook, but she kept going. "And I helped you. I filmed all of it."

"He's not a liar. He's a businessman."

"He's a salesman, Mom. I watched him say so to two hundred people this morning."

Deena laughed, too high.

"Spence explained that. It's how the owners do it. They hide."

Bennet had come up the walk behind us.

He stood at the bottom of the porch steps with his hands in his coat pockets and didn't say a word.

← Chapter 15 · All chapters · Chapter 17 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend