Page 88 of Bittersweet & Strange

I nearly turn toward the door, already hearing the argument he would make and imagining the outrage on his face, only to remember there will be no argument.

There will be no Boone.

I stand there for a long time with one hand resting beside the tiny tree, my anger useless because there is no one to direct it toward. I cannot be angry with Boone for leaving when I am the one who finally let him go. I cannot punish anyone for taking him because no one did.

I gave him his father.

His home.

His freedom.

Everything he begged me for from the moment he arrived.

I simply failed to understand how much of myself would leave with him.

My thumb brushes a speck of soil from the rim of the pot, then I pull my hand away.

“You grew,” I mutter.

The little leaves tremble in the warm air.

I stare at them, waiting for the satisfaction I know Boone would have felt, but there is nothing satisfying about it.

There is a tremendous difference between never having anyone and knowing exactly who is missing.

33

Boone

The pounding on the front door comes shortly after breakfast, three heavy blows that shake the wood in its frame and make my father look up from the table with his cup halfway to his mouth. No one knocks like that when they’re bringing good news. When several voices carry through the door, followed by the unmistakable scrape of boots across the porch, I’m already getting to my feet.

The door opens before I can reach it.

Lucien walks in first with four men behind him, and I recognize every single one of them.

I grow nervous.

“Lucien.” My father slowly pushes himself out of his chair, one hand remaining against the table for balance as he looks between the men filling our doorway. “What is this?”

Lucien doesn’t even look at him. His attention settles entirely on me. “I gave you time.”

I know immediately why he’s here.

“No.”

Two of the men move past me toward my father, and I step into their path. “Get out of our house.”

Gideon won’t meet my eyes. I’ve known him since I was a child. I remember him standing on this same property, helping my father repair the barn after a storm tore half the roof away. The man beside him used to slip me pieces of candy whenever my father brought me into town, and now they’re standing in my home preparing to put their hands on him.

“Don’t touch my father.”

When the first man tries to move around me, I shove him hard enough that he stumbles backward. I barely have enough time to turn when someone catches my arm from behind, then another hand closes around the opposite one.

I fight immediately.

“Let go of me!”

I wrench forward with everything I have, but the second man plants his feet and drags me backward while the first tightens his grip around my arm. My boots scrape across the floor as I twist hard enough that pain shoots through my shoulder, but neither of them releases me.