Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 300(@200wpm)___ 240(@250wpm)___ 200(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 300(@200wpm)___ 240(@250wpm)___ 200(@300wpm)
“Not quite. But whenever they started to threaten a levy, she’d go in and make promises. Make payment arrangements. She’d keep those up for a while then stop. And a levy never moves quick—not in our county, anyway. But after fifteen years, they began moving toward taking the house. It never actually went to auction, though. Is that what she said happened? That’s why you thought my dad got it for nothing?”
“It is,” I say, feeling utterly numb. “But she went to him?”
“Yeah. I was there for that. He called me up, said he had a gift for me. That meeting was when I saw the paperwork, the history. She said she didn’t want the hassle of trying to sell it through a realtor. She just wanted it off her hands.” He shakes his head. “But she shouldn’t have an issue finding another place. His company paid cash, and after settling the outstanding taxes…that should have left her about four hundred K in the bank.”
I stagger and trip over my snowshoes, dropping to the snow in a tangled heap. “Four hundred thousand?!”
His grim nod is like another punch to my gut. I can’t take the hand he offers to help me up. I can only stare up at him while everything I thought I knew crashes down around me.
Four hundred thousand. While all this time, she hasn’t been paying for much of anything—saying she’s saving up for another place. But although it sucks that she hasn’t been helping out financially while living in my house, it’s not what rips into me the most.
What hurts are the lies. The guilt trips.
The majority of the money I used to buy my house was from my share of my father’s life insurance and the trust he left for each of us. That’s the weapon my mom pulls out whenever I gently suggest they start looking for their own place—because isn’t it horrible and selfish to use money earned off my dad’s death to buy a home, but not gladly welcome the rest of his family to live there, too?
Since I haven’t taken Reed’s hand, have just sat in the snow staring up at him stupidly, he crouches beside me—with clenched teeth and a hiss, as if the movement pulls painfully at his leg. Yet he focuses his concern on me.
“Are you all right?”
“No.” My voice wavers as if I might burst into tears again. Whatever happened to not allowing Reed Knowles to see any of my vulnerable spots? Yet I’m sprawled out in front of him now, nothing but a huge and pulsating open wound.
He seems to realize I need time to process. Time and space. Tilting his head toward the skinny tree, he says, “So, that one?”
“No,” I say hoarsely. “Let’s take the branch.”
“Which branch?” This time, no skepticism or doubt. He looks ready to snap off any of the four branches on that sad little tree.
“Not those. The one in the road. I don’t actually need a whole tree. I’m not putting any presents under it. I just like that pine smell.”
“So you want to celebrate Christmas with the branch that almost killed me.”
That dryly stated response almost makes me smile. “You’ll get your revenge by dismembering it. And it’s blocking part of the road, so it’ll have to be cut down before we drive back through anyway.”
“True.” His dark eyes search my face. “What’s the plan if the snow doesn’t melt?”
“Hopefully it will. A warm front is supposed to be coming in after Christmas. But if I don’t show up to work on the Monday after the new year, Harris sends a plow.” That was just the plan for me, however. “Does anyone know where you are? Are you going to be listed as a missing person or return to attend your own funeral?”
“I sent Harris a text. I don’t know if he replied. My phone’s in there.” He gestures to his pack. “He might have tried to tell me you were already here. Or…maybe he didn’t.”
“Because he thinks it’d be hilarious if a blizzard trapped us together?”
“Probably.” He rubs his hand over his cold-reddened face, then gives me another of those warm looks. That caring look. “If it helps, it’s not just your mom. My dad’s a raging asshole, too.”
“It does help.” I don’t know why, but it does. “What are you, Reed Knowles? Also a raging asshole?”
“Maybe.” Then he shakes his head. “No, what I am is very lucky.”
“True.”
“No, I mean—I’m lucky I got whacked on the head. If I hadn’t wrecked, I’d have stopped at the cabin, saw you were there, and left the same night. And I wouldn’t have realized there’s at least one Walker girl worth knowing. The Abbie girl.”
“And I wouldn’t have known my mother lied to me.” Or that one Knowles man is maybe worth knowing, too.