Page 95 of A Boy Called Lovesong

This was the note that the reverend’s wife found when she stumbled across the crying baby abandoned at the crossroads.

Only…

“I know this handwriting. I’ve seen this handwriting before.”

My eyes shot across the desk to the reverend’s Bible.

I clawed it toward me and flipped it open, thumbing through page after page after page, looking between the notes in the Bible and the note that had been left with Lovesong’s basket, my eyes wide and horrified at the way the S’s swirled like a snake, the way the L’s finished with a pompous flourish, the way the E’s were written like a backward 3.

“Lovesong’s mother didn’t write this note,” I whispered in horror. “The reverend did. It wasn’t the Devil who took her. It washim.”

My heart stopped at theclomp, clomp, clompof footsteps on the porch steps.

I heard voices outside—the reverend and his wife.

“Oh fuck.”

I grabbed the note from Lovesong’s basket.

I grabbed the letter that Joel had written.

I heard the front door open, and the reverend say, “I could have sworn I locked this door on the way out.”

I tucked the note and the letter into the pages of the bible, then closed the chest, locked it, and returned the key to the desk drawer and the chest to the bookshelf.

Footsteps made their way down the hallway to the kitchen.

I grabbed the Bible and slid out of the study.

I turned into a room I hadn’t been in before, a living room, realizing the unexplored house was a labyrinth to me.

I heard the voice of the reverend approaching as he said, “I hope tonight’s sermon will be enough to let everyone know that Van Owen boy needs to be run out of town.”

He walked into the living room from a door at the far end.

I swiftly backed into a corridor, hearing his wife’s voice approaching.

“Well let’s hope Mr. Van Owen gets the message, before we start teaching him some southern manners.”

She turned into the corridor.

I stepped quickly and silently into the next room, a sitting room.

Jesus glared at me from a picture on the wall and I slipped through the next door.

I was in the hallway that led to the front door.

Creeping as quietly as I could I made my way to the exit…

Turned the handle…

Opened it…

And ran.

CHAPTER 19

I didn’t stop runninguntil I reached the manor, clinging to the Bible the entire way.

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