Wash Her Feet novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Move

The house was empty by Sunday night.

Rafe's crew had come with two trucks and carried my father's furniture out in an hour.

The long green sofa went, and the kitchen table, and the portrait.

The portrait went to a storage unit, with the ledger in a box beside it.

I had decided that the trust would keep the ledger.

If anyone ever wanted it, it could sit in a museum case beside the stone.

I stood in the front hall with a single duffel bag and the keys.

The new couple would take the house in the morning.

I had promised them the porch swing.

Rafe found me on the top step of the porch at dusk and sat down beside me.

For a while neither of us said a word.

The oak was dropping its leaves into the yard.

A neighbor walked her dog along the sidewalk, and looked at us, and looked away.

"Strange," I said. "It doesn't feel like anything."

"Give it a night."

"I thought I'd cry."

"You cried for a month."

"That's true."

He had his boots off.

I hadn't noticed him take them off.

He sat with his bare feet on the second step.

A white mark showed on one ankle where a boot strap had rubbed for twelve years.

"I brought something," he said.

He reached behind him, and I saw it.

It was the old plastic basin, scratched and dented.

Shelby had left it with him after the memorial, folded in a towel, with a note.

I don't want it anymore.

"Rafe," I said. "No."

"Let me say it first."

"You don't owe me a forfeit."

"It isn't one."

He filled the basin from the hose at the side of the porch.

He warmed it from a kettle he'd carried over and set it on the step in front of me.

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