My Brother Gave Her My Place, So I Stopped Coming Home novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: She Needed My Room More

Sasha goes home to collect her things and finds Janie in her room and Dylan calling it kindness; her keycard at the office stops working.

Mom called the hotel room at 5:30, in her soft voice.

"Dylan says you're not coming to dinner. Sweetheart, please don't make this a scene."

"I'm coming for my things," I said. "I'll be there at six."

"Janie's already unpacked."

I hung up before she could say it kindly.

The house on Hyde Park Road had every light on.

Dylan's car was in the drive. So was a rented van I didn't recognize, with a mattress strapped to the back.

The front door was unlocked. It was always unlocked for me, and I stood in the hall and noticed that.

Boxes lined the wall by the garage door, marked in Dylan's square handwriting.

SASHA, BOOKS. SASHA, DRAWING STUFF. SASHA, MISC.

My drafting table was in the garage with a moving blanket over it, next to the lawn chairs.

I went up the stairs to the east bedroom.

The door was open.

Janie sat on my window seat with a shoebox on her lap, and the room already belonged to her.

My bedspread was gone. There was a cream quilt I had never seen, and a framed photo of a woman with Janie's eyes.

My brass lamp was still on the desk, the one my grandmother used to read by.

The model of Beacon House stood on the shelf where I'd left it, all nine floors, built over fourteen months from basswood and glue.

Janie saw me and stood up so fast the shoebox slid off her knees.

"Sasha. Oh, no. I didn't want any of this."

Her eyes were already full.

"Dylan said you'd said yes. I should have asked you myself. I'm going to ask your mother if I can go back to the guest room, I'll sleep in the garage, I don't care."

"Janie, you don't have to," I said.

"I do. I just don't know how to say it." She was crying. "My mom's things are all in that box and I'm scared to be alone with them. The guest room is next to your dad's study. I hear everything. Here I can finally shut a door."

I believed her. That was the worst part.

"Take the lamp," she said. "Take the model, take anything. Please. I touched nothing."

"Nobody's taking anything," Dylan said from the hall.

He came in with a roll of packing tape and put an arm around her shoulders.

"She needed this room more, Sasha. She has nobody. You have a salary, a hotel card and a drafting table."

"I have a name on this house too," I said.

"Nobody erased your name. It's a room."

"It's my room. You didn't ask me."

"Because I knew what you'd say." He smiled. "You'd say yes and then be miserable about it. I saved you the trouble."

Behind him, Dad stood in the hall in his reading glasses.

He looked at the quilt, then at the box in Janie's hands, and then he looked at his shoes.

"Dad," I said. "Did you agree to this?"

"It's only a room, Sasha."

"You didn't say kiddo."

I don't know why I said it.

Janie looked at him quickly. Dad's face went gray, and he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"Not tonight," he said, and went downstairs.

I carried the lamp down myself.

I took the model, the tube of drawings and my laptop. I wrapped the model in a bath towel from Mom's linen closet and called a car, and nobody stopped me.

Dylan followed me out to the curb and carried the tube of drawings, helpful to the end.

"I'll have the rest sent to your hotel," he said. "Stay as long as you want. You'll be back by Sunday. You always are."

"Not this time."

"Sasha." He set the tube in the car service's trunk. "You always are."

Back at the hotel I put the lamp on the nightstand and plugged it in.

Then I opened my work email, because I wanted to check next week's Beacon calendar.

There was one new message at the top.

Klingenberg Group IT, security notice. Badge 4471 deactivated, 12:03 a.m.

That was the middle of last night.

That was eight hours before Dylan booked the SUV, and before anyone told me anything.

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