Loving Him Was My Punishment novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Rules of the House
The woman who knocked at noon had a grocery bag on each hip and a pencil stuck behind her ear.
"I'm Celia," she said, when I opened the green door on the chain. "I'm his sister. I'm the one he's afraid of."
Finbar, behind me, said, "She's real. I looked her up."
"I'm very real," Celia said. "There's soup. Also a loaf, a kettle, a toothbrush still in its box, and a pack of those awful ginger biscuits, because my brother said you were sick on a landing and he thinks ginger fixes everything."
I took the chain off.
She walked into the kitchen as if she had done it before, which I understood later was because she had.
She put the soup on the stove and turned around.
"Rules," she said. "He told me you'd want rules, and he says he'll sign anything. I told him I'd write them down so he can't weasel."
"I don't have any yet," I said.
"Then make some."
I looked at the pencil behind her ear.
She handed it to me, along with the back of a takeaway menu.
I sat at the table and wrote three lines, slowly, because my hand still shook.
One: he stays six steps from me in any room.
Two: he never touches me unless I ask.
Three: he never tells me what I felt about him before.
I looked at the last one for a while.
"Why that one?" Celia asked.
"Because everyone else already has," I said. "Marguerite, the doctors, the whole club. I'm the only person who never gets to say what happened."
Celia nodded, and for once she did not make a joke.
I added a line at the bottom. "And if I say out, he leaves. No argument."
Finbar whistled softly.
"Say it again to him yourself," Celia said, and took out her phone. "He's been parked at the end of the street since nine."
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