She Heard Nothing novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Two Lemon Drops, Again

Parents' weekend came in April, with a warm wind and a field full of folding chairs.

I stood at the edge of the parade ground with a paper cup of lemonade and counted the people I knew.

Lottie was a head taller than her mother and kept pulling her toward things.

"This is the field," Lottie said. "This is where I got yelled at. That's the exact patch of grass."

"I'm very proud of you," Lottie's mother said, and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand that was rough from work.

"Mom. Don't cry on the patch."

I laughed, and the drill instructor came up beside me in a clean shirt with his cap in his hand.

"Wrenfield," he said. "It's the day."

"At a walk," I said.

"At a walk."

We went around the iron fence together, slowly, in the sun.

He did not say much, and neither did I.

At the far end by the gate, I slowed.

The silver SUV was gone.

In its place was a folding chair, set a little apart from the others, in the shade of the last row.

A woman sat in it with her back straight and her purse on her knees.

She wore a plain gray coat, and she had come with nothing in her hands, and she had not put in either earbud.

She was looking at the field, and she had already seen me.

I went on around the track, and the drill instructor went with me, and neither of us said a word about her.

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Heard Nothing from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.