Chapter 16. Someone Sat in My Tree

Josie's POV

We left Ashford Court on Thursday at six, three trucks and a horse trailer, and Hugh Marsh rode in the front seat of mine.

He'd arranged it himself. "The cook should be near the chancellor," he told Fitch in the yard, pleasantly, "in case the chancellor gets hungry." So I sat in the back of the lead truck behind his neat gray head for four hours, with Corran beside me pretending to sleep and Weston two vehicles behind, where Marsh had put him.

Marsh talked the whole way. About the leaves turning. About a pie he'd eaten in Staunton in 1994. About his daughter, who was sulking, he said fondly, and would get over it.

He never once mentioned the west line or a slope or a child. Every so often he turned around in his seat to smile at me, and every time he did, the green bitter note came off his cuff