The Whole Valley Called Her the Plain Fiancee, So She Let the Banquet Read the Deed novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Proxy Vote

Rhys's POV

The old woman lived in a stone house at the end of a gravel road above Touchet.

She kept forty chickens, a wood stove and a dog the size of a calf.

She had sat on my grandfather's board for thirty-one years.

She had taught me to read a barrel when I was nine, standing on a stool in the cellar with a long glass thief in my hand.

I had not visited her in four years, because my mother did not approve.

I drove up on a Sunday in the first week of December with snow on the ground.

The Aldahls' green pickup followed me.

Signe had insisted.

She stopped at the end of the lane and sat with the engine off and a thermos of coffee.

The old woman had said on the telephone that she wished to see me alone.

She opened the door in a man's cardigan, with her white hair in a knot.

"You've come about the vote," she said.

"Yes."

"Wipe your feet."

I wiped them.

She led me into a kitchen that smelled of bread and woodsmoke and poured two cups of tea without asking.

I sat down.

My hands were not steady, and she noticed, as she always had.

"Your father called me from the care house on Thursday," she said.

"It took him twenty minutes.

"I hung on."

"He told me," I said.

"He said I was to do whatever was right," she said, and sipped her tea.

"He is a better judge of that than you are."

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