My Stepbrother Came Home for the Anniversary, and I Didn't Know Him novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Apology
My mother sat in the Buick at my curb until after midnight.
I watched her through the slats of the blind, with Matti's arm across my back and neither of us saying anything.
She didn't get out, and she didn't honk.
At twelve-fifteen she put on her blinker for an empty street and pulled away.
At nine the next morning the doorbell rang.
I opened it in a flannel and bare feet.
My mother stood on the step in her church cardigan with no lipstick on, and her silver-blond bob had not been brushed.
Behind her, at the curb, Arvid's truck idled with Arvid at the wheel.
He didn't get out.
He had both hands on the wheel at ten and two, and he looked at the dashboard.
"I'm not asking to come in," Diane said.
"Good."
"I want to say something to Matti. If he'll hear it."
I stood in the doorway for a long time.
Then I felt him come up behind me, barefoot, in yesterday's jeans, and stop at my shoulder.
My mother's eyes went to him and stayed.
"Matti," she said. "I'm sorry I let you carry it."
Her voice shook, and she made it stop.
"You were eighteen years old. You came to me with the bank letter, and you asked me a plain question, and I begged you to be quiet. Then I let a girl I raised call you a thief on a night I could have stopped. I let you walk out to a truck with a duffel bag. I watched you do it from my own window."
Matti said nothing.
His hand came to rest on the doorframe over my head.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Stepbrother Came Home for the Anniversary, and I Didn't Know Him are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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