From Secret Desire for My Stepbrother to Reality novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Notice

I carried the notice back to the workshop.

The old key-cutter turned off his grinder before I said anything.

He read it standing up.

Then he folded it in half and put it on the bench.

"Sixty days," he said.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. You didn't sell it."

He picked up the key he'd been cutting and blew the brass dust off it.

"I came here in nineteen eighty-six," he said. "His grandfather hired me because I could cut a key for a Packard. Nobody else in Ballard could."

"What's a Packard?"

He looked at me for a long time.

"That's the saddest thing anybody's said to me today," he said, and turned the grinder back on.

Jem came down at seven.

I handed him the notice.

He read it twice.

He didn't say anything.

He walked through the workshop, opened the basement door, and went down the stairs.

I heard the light switch click.

Then nothing.

The apprentice came in at nine.

Kath had already told her.

She walked in, threw her bag on the counter, and said, "Absolutely not."

"It's not up to us," Kath said.

"I'm starting a petition."

She sat down at the counter and started typing with her thumbs, furious.

Pete and my mother came at ten with doughnuts.

Pete read the notice.

He put his cap back on.

"I'm going to say something," he said. "And nobody's going to like it."

"Dad."

"The landlord. Have we tried crying at him?"

My mother hit him on the arm with the doughnut box.

I went down to the basement.

It was long and low, with a dirt smell and one bare bulb.

The doors stood in rows against the walls.

Paneled doors. Glass doors. A red one with a horseshoe knocker.

Jem was sitting on an upturned bucket in the middle of them.

He was holding a key I'd never seen.

"First key my grandfather ever cut in this building," he said, without looking up. "Nineteen sixty-eight. It opens the front door. He never changed the lock."

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