My Stepmother Sold Me to the Alpha Who Hates My Father's Name, and the Child He Wants Is the Proof That Clears It novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Naming, Late

The new terms hung on the springhouse wall the next morning, pinned to a beam with a bee-yard staple.

The signed original lay in the drawer of the Teller's table on the Knob, under the old note.

The copy I had made hung here.

I read it over my coffee in my father's old chair with my feet up and the creek loud outside the door.

*One. Caly Lowry keeps the Laurel Gap house and the bee yard, in her own name, and owes no one for it.*

*Two. She keeps her route, and her work, and her name.*

*Three. The child is hers and his, and it will be Named in her own words.*

*Four. Nobody enters her room unasked, and she may ask whom she likes.*

*Five. She will cross the line when she chooses, and she will choose it with her feet.*

Under them, in two hands, were two names.

"You've not said what the last one means," said Ned.

He stood in the springhouse door with a mug in each hand and his hair on end.

He had slept in my bed, under my father's quilt, with one big arm across me and his face in my neck.

He had not stirred until the sun came over the ridge.

"It means what it says," I said.

"The line is the Laurel Gap fence."

"It is."

"I've crossed it twice," said Ned. "I'd like to know if there's a third."

"There's a third," I said, and took the mug.

"It isn't yours to cross. It's mine, and I'll tell you which one when I've decided."

He sat down on the step.

It was the first week of April, and the mountain had gone green overnight.

It had come up the hollow in a long wave, red buds and yellow willow and the first grey tips of laurel, and the air smelled of wet earth.

The bees had broken cluster on the twenty-third of March.

I had stood in the yard with my veil pushed up and watched them come out of their boxes in the sun, thirty hives of them in a slow gold cloud, and I had laughed out loud.

"The Teller's coming up at ten," said Ned.

"I know," I said.

"She says she wants it done at the bridge."

"She would," I said.

I put the cup down.

I was six months gone, with a belly I could not hide under any coat, and the child had begun to move.

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