The Discarded Heiress Returns novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Glow Stars

Dorrie explains the deal Augusta made her, Dale and Nana take Tallulah in, and under Dorrie's pillow Tallulah finds a long-lens photo of Dorrie taken five years ago.

"Three weeks," I said.

Dorrie nodded at the gravel.

"She came to my school. She waited in the parking lot after science club."

"In a cream suit," I said.

Dorrie looked up. "How did you know?"

"She wears cream when she wants something."

The driver was still standing by the car with the back door open.

He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else on earth.

Dorrie sat back down on the step, so I sat down next to her.

The concrete was still warm from the day.

"She showed me a paper with my name on it," Dorrie said. "My blood type. Her blood type. A lab stamp."

"And she asked you to keep quiet."

"She said if I kept quiet and came home on the birthday, she'd pay off my daddy's loan."

"What loan?"

Dorrie pointed up at the sign without looking at it.

"The bank's taking the motel in June. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars. My granddaddy built it."

"So you said yes."

"I said yes." She pushed her glasses up. "I'm sorry. I didn't know she'd do it in front of everybody. She said a quiet lunch."

"She doesn't do quiet lunches."

"I know that now."

I looked at the girl with my mother's face.

She had a burn on her thumb and a pencil behind her ear.

I wanted to hate her.

I couldn't find anywhere to put it.

The office door banged open.

A big man came out on the porch with a dish towel over his shoulder.

He had a red beard going gray and a Braves cap pushed back on his head.

Reading glasses hung on a cord around his neck.

He stopped when he saw me.

"Well," he said.

He took the cap off and turned it around in his hands.

"The lawyer called this morning," he said. "I didn't believe him till about four o'clock."

"I'm Tallulah," I said.

"Dale Bledsoe." He put the cap back on, then took it off again. "I guess I'm your daddy. Or I can just be Dale. Whichever one you can stand."

"Dale," I said.

"Dale's fine. Dale's what the bank calls me too, and they don't like me either."

Dorrie groaned. "Daddy."

"What? It's a good joke. It's a true joke."

I laughed.

I didn't mean to.

Dale's whole face cracked open when I did.

Then he looked at Dorrie's suitcase and the face closed again.

"You knew," he said to her. Not angry. Just tired.

"I'm sorry, Daddy."

He pulled her into his chest and held on.

Over her head, he looked at me like he was afraid I'd vanish too.

A screen door slapped somewhere behind the office.

"Is that the girl?" an old woman shouted. "Bring her in here before she faints."

"That's Nana," Dorrie said into her daddy's shirt. "She's been frying since six."

The kitchen was behind the office, small and hot and yellow.

Nana was tiny, with white curls and a housecoat and reading glasses on top of her head.

She looked me up and down.

"You've got frosting on your hand," she said.

"It's from my cake."

"Did you eat any of it?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then sit."

She put a fried egg sandwich in front of me with a slice of pound cake on the side.

"That's your birthday cake," she said. "This one doesn't come with a speech."

I ate the whole sandwich.

I hadn't known I was starving.

Nana watched me eat with her arms folded.

"You've got good manners," she said. "We'll fix that."

The driver knocked on the screen door.

He had his cap in his hand.

"Miss Dorrie," he said. "Mrs. Ballantyne asked me to bring you back tonight."

"She told the room tomorrow," I said.

"Yes, miss. She told me tonight."

Dorrie stood up.

Dale stood up with her and didn't let go of her suitcase handle.

"You don't have to go," he said.

"Yes, I do. She hasn't paid the bank yet."

She took the suitcase out of his hand.

At the door, she turned back to me.

"My room's at the end of the hall," she said. "The one with the stars. Don't laugh."

"I won't."

"You will. Everybody does."

She hugged Nana.

Then she walked out to the car that used to be mine and got in the back.

I watched the taillights go over the causeway toward Savannah.

Dale stood in the gravel until they were gone.

Then he came back inside and washed one plate for a long time.

Dorrie's room was smaller than my closet on Monterey Square.

It had a twin bed, a fish tank with no fish, and a poster of a humpback whale.

The ceiling was covered in plastic stars.

When I turned out the light, they glowed green.

Somebody had stuck them up in the shape of real constellations.

I lay under them in my white silk blouse and didn't laugh.

I turned over and pushed my hand under the pillow.

There was a stiff envelope there.

It was cream colored, with the Ballantyne crest on the flap.

I turned the lamp back on.

The envelope was empty except for one photograph, stuck in the corner of it.

It was Dorrie at a school bus stop, much younger, in a yellow raincoat.

It had been taken from far away, through a long lens, from across a road.

In the bottom corner, an orange date was printed into the picture.

09 23 2013.

I was twelve that fall.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

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