Chapter 5: Balance Due

For ten days I had turned over one picture: Dina behind the wheel of a white SUV at my gate, with a surveyor in the passenger seat.

I had called Curtis about it, and he said she'd only been "looking at places for the kids to visit." Then he hung up on me.

I wrote the date in my notebook and left it there.

By the second Friday, I had learned where the porch gave one bar of signal.

It was the third step from the top, on the left, if I held the phone toward the barn.

Jed was on the roof above me, nailing down the last tarp.

He had come every morning that week.

Every morning I handed him coffee and a plate of eggs, and every morning he pretended it was a coincidence.

My phone buzzed with a video call.

It was Sierra.

She looked beautiful, even through the cracked screen, with her hair up and a pen behind her ear.

"Audra, hi." She said it brightly, and then she didn't say anything for a second. "Are you okay out there?"

"I'm fine. I'm fixing a roof."

"Oh. Good." She glanced off the screen. "So, I'm just checking, because you always know where these things are."

"What things?"

"The wedding stuff. The venue balance is due today, and I can't find the card Dad said was for it."

"And the photographer's already given my date to somebody else."

"Sierra, he said he'd hold it until Monday."

"He did, and I forgot to call him back." Her voice wobbled.

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