Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Waiting.
For a call ...
A text.
Anything.
“No,” Gracen said, not able to hide the disappointing dip in her tone. “He hasn’t.”
“Yet,” Delaney added.
Gracen frowned.
She had to consider the fact that Malachi had left her place very early in the morning. At the latest, he’d arrived home in Miramichi around noon. That was if he took breaks on the road, too; so she gave him grace. Now, closing in on the evening hours, the lack of calls or messages felt almost pointed.
Purposeful.
“You could call him,” Delaney suggested.
“And ask him if he’s a liar?” Gracen returned.
What would be the point?
Gracen already had the answer.
Her friend’s unimpressed expression stared back at her in the reflection of the mirror. “I think we both know it’s probably a lot more complicated than that.”
Not really.
Gracen simplified shit down.
“Even if what I have to give to somebody isn’t a lot, I’m willing to give all of it,” Gracen said. “I’m not going to feel bad about expecting someone else to do the same for me, Delaney.”
It all mattered.
Every good and bad part.
The thing was, to do that, a person had to stop running from what used to be to build something meaningful in the present. Gracen couldn’t say Malachi was ready to do that—after all, he’d gotten terribly good at staying away.
Delaney glanced down at her workstation. “Yeah, I guess ...”
Thinking the conversation was over, Gracen pushed out of the swivel chair to find the broom and get to work. The sooner they finished, the quicker she could sleep away this horrible day. She disappeared into the backrooms and re-emerged with the broom and dustpan in just enough time to see Delaney hang up her phone.
It would have been a terribly short phone call.
Less than twenty seconds.
“Who was that?” Gracen asked.
Delaney stuffed the phone in her back pocket. “Bexley.”
“Your cousin?”
“I need to take her something.”
Gracen leaned on the handle of the broom, using it as support for her tired body. “I thought you were staying clear of her?”
The whole damn family, really.
Delaney shrugged. “Yeah, that’s the story.”
“And if your uncle shows up here to threaten you again?” Gracen questioned.
“That won’t happen. He’d have to know we were talking to begin with—the point is that he doesn’t, you know?”
“Not really. To be fair, you’re not exactly sharing.”
A lot like Malachi.
Gracen didn’t point that out.
Delaney faced Gracen, fretting with her nails and the thin gold rings on her fingers as she said, “Alora isn’t the only person trying to leave the church, okay?”
Jesus.
Bexley was coming into her adulthood, too, and so it made sense if she had a desire to leave. Unlike her friend, however, a marriage as a way out might not be a viable option.
“I filled out her applications for nursing school,” Delaney explained, “and mailed them back when we were still meeting up for the wedding stuff. I found her acceptance in the mailbox when I checked it this morning.”
“Oh, wow. That’s—”
“It should be great, yeah,” her friend interjected with the obvious, “but it won’t make a difference if she can’t get away from those people and out of this town. This was my little way of helping her see a new path. That she’s got options.”
Nothing good came easy.
Wasn’t that how the saying went?
“Let me know if I can help,” Gracen said. “We’re not going to let anyone from that church, or your family, push you around anymore.”
Delaney smiled, as timid as it was. “I’m not scared of them.”
Maybe she really wasn’t afraid. Or perhaps Delaney was just as scared as she had always been of the people she’d left behind—rightfully so, too, but didn’t want to admit it. Either way, there came a point, though, when fear just wasn’t enough to hold someone back from doing what needed done. That, more than anything, Gracen understood.
Fear had kept her going for a long time, too.
Chapter 32
The math didn’t work.
Malachi couldn’t make it work no matter how many times he went back over the receipts for the small drywall project. He spent too many minutes staring at the numbers he already knew wouldn’t add up because he’d tried.
Fifteen times.
“Chip,” Malachi called down the portable office building.
A grunt answered back.
A shuffle of papers, too.
“Chip!”
“What, ya fuck?” Chip barked back.
Malachi laughed off the insult—it wasn’t anything unusual for Chip when he walked onto a project. His boss switch flipped on, and nothing else mattered but getting the job done. If that meant him yelling at the guys through it, and being a total asshole in the meantime, so be it.
“Come here for a minute,” Malachi said. “I need you to look at something for me.”
Again, he opted not to add out loud.
This wasn’t the first job—not even the sixth—for the year that had fucked up bookkeeping in one way or another. Chip liked to brush it off. The accountant would figure it out and put everything where it needed to be, apparently, but Malachi still felt like he had to keep bringing it to Chip’s attention, nonetheless.