From Secret Desire for My Stepbrother to Reality novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Pot Roast at Ten

In the family kitchen Pam is hurt and Pete is joking, the two of them tell the plain truth, Pam leaves the table, and reporters camp at Lindy's door until Jem offers the room over his shop.

My mother's house in Shoreline smelled like pot roast at ten o'clock at night.

She stress-cooks.

She had been cooking since the slide.

Pete opened the door before we knocked.

He was still in his good shirt, with the ferry cap back on his head.

"Well," he said. "Look who's trending."

"Dad," Jem said.

"Too soon?"

"Yes."

"I'll workshop it."

He stepped back to let us in, and as I passed him he put one big hand on top of my head, the way he does.

That almost undid me more than anything Tom had said.

My mother was at the stove with her back to us.

She had the red glasses on her nose now, not in her hair, which meant she'd been reading the comments.

"Sit," she said.

We sat.

Jem took the chair across from me, not beside me.

I noticed that.

So did my mother, when she turned around.

She put four plates on the table hard enough to rattle the forks.

Nobody ate.

Pete cut a potato in half and looked at it.

"Is it true?" my mother said.

"Yes," I said.

"Yes," Jem said.

She looked from one of us to the other.

"How long?"

"I typed his name three years ago. December nineteenth."

"The month he changed your lock," she said.

"Yes."

"And that Christmas you brought Tom."

I looked at my plate.

"Yes."

"And you?" she said to Jem.

"Summer before that," he said. "The ferry dock. She'd just moved here. She got on the wrong boat."

"I got on the right boat," I said. "It just went to Bremerton."

Pete coughed into his napkin.

My mother didn't smile.

"Did you two ever," she said, and stopped.

She took her glasses off.

"I need to hear you say it. Did anything ever happen. Ever. In this house."

"No," I said.

"Never," Jem said. "Pam. I swear it on Grandpa's shop. I never touched her. Not once."

"We met at your wedding," I said. "I was twenty-one. I was in Boston. I flew in for two days."

"He danced with you," she said.

"He danced with you too."

"He danced with me because Pete has two left feet and a bad knee."

"Both true," Pete said.

My mother pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

"I found out from a man on a stage," she said. "With fifteen hundred people. My neighbor sent me a clip before I got to the car."

"I know."

"You don't know. You were on the stage. I was in row three, with everybody looking at me to see what kind of mother raises that."

"Mom."

"I'm not saying it's wrong."

She stood up.

"I don't know what I'm saying. I gave out those codes, Lindy. The first week of December. I texted that little game to everybody in this family like it was a coupon."

Her voice cracked on coupon.

"I texted it to him."

She put her napkin down beside her full plate.

"I'm going to bed," she said. "Nobody follow me."

She went down the hall.

The bedroom door closed.

It didn't slam.

That was worse.

The three of us sat there with the pot roast going cold.

I looked at Pete.

He was carefully cutting the other half of his potato.

"Say something terrible," I said. "Please."

He set his knife down.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "I want that on the record. I'm the only one at this table who isn't surprised."

Jem put his face in his hands.

"Dad."

"Christmas, three years back. You passed her the gravy four times. She never asked for it once."

I laughed so hard I had to hold the edge of the table.

Then I was crying, and I couldn't tell when it had switched.

Pete got up and put a box of tissues in front of me, and a plate of roast, and a fork.

"Eat," he said. "Your mother's going to ask if you ate."

I ate.

It was the best thing I'd had all day.

My phone buzzed on the table.

It had been buzzing for two hours, and I'd turned it face down at the door.

This time it was the building group chat.

The woman in 3B had posted a photo from her window.

There were two news vans in front of my building on Capitol Hill.

Three people with cameras sat on the steps.

One of them was eating a sandwich on my welcome mat.

Under it she'd written: "Is this about you, Lindy? They asked me which unit."

I turned the phone around so Jem could see.

Pete leaned over too.

"Well," Pete said. "You can't stay here. Your mother will cook at you until Christmas."

"I'll get a hotel."

"They'll find a hotel," Jem said.

"I'll get a weird hotel."

He looked at me across the table for a long moment.

Then he took the key ring off his belt loop and slid one key off it.

It was brass and new-cut, still bright at the teeth.

He put it down next to my plate.

"The room over the shop has a deadbolt," he said. "I installed it myself."

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