My Stepbrother Is My Secret Master novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: New York

"Laurel Prewitt," the juror said. "For Blind Contours."

I didn't hear the rest.

Daisy screamed directly into my ear, and then my dad was lifting me off the floor again.

The juror shook my hand on the stage.

"Three outside jurors," she said into my ear. "None of us has ever met your professor. We just wanted to see what you'd draw next."

I looked out over the crowd.

My dad was crying openly. Dorinda was waving her program like a flag.

Beckett was at the back by the twelfth easel, under his own face, clapping slowly.

He didn't come up.

He let it be mine.

The residency started in July.

A studio on the top floor of an old printworks in Brooklyn, a stipend, a year.

I said yes before the juror finished the sentence.

The last week of May, I sat in the second row of the courtroom again.

Blaire wore gray this time.

Her father wasn't there.

His seat behind her was empty, and she kept looking at it.

The judge let me read my statement.

I didn't write it about the freezer.

I wrote it about the photo, and the boathouse, and the forty people she'd wanted to watch me break.

"She wanted everyone to see me," I read. "They did. I'm still here."

The judge gave her four years.

The bailiff put his hand on her elbow.

Blaire stood and turned, and for the first time since September, she looked smaller than me.

She opened her mouth.

Nothing came out of it.

They walked her out through the side door.

I watched until it shut.

Then I went outside into the sun, where my family was waiting on the steps with an iced coffee they'd bought me, three sugars.

In the second week of June, Dorinda and my dad had their first anniversary on the lawn at Lake Forest.

There were paper lanterns in the trees and a band from Chillicothe that only knew country songs.

The butler danced with Daisy. Nobody could believe it, least of all Daisy.

My dad gave a toast with his hands in his pockets.

"A year ago I married a woman I met on her roof," he said. "She's gotten me into a lot of trouble since."

Everybody laughed.

"Best year of my life," he said. "To Dori. And to our kids."

He looked at Beckett when he said it, and then at me.

Dorinda leaned against his shoulder and cried into his good suit.

Later, under the lanterns, Beckett found me by the water.

"I've been thinking about New York," he said.

"You hate New York. You said so."

"I hate it less than Chicago without you."

I waited.

"I took a place in Brooklyn," he said. "Twenty blocks from your studio. I'm not asking for a key. I'm not asking to move in. You don't owe me anything. I just want to be where I can bring you coffee."

"Three sugars."

"I know how you take your coffee, Laurel."

I looked at him in the lantern light.

He meant it.

He'd asked for nothing all year, and he was still asking for nothing.

"Come upstairs," I said.

We went up the curved staircase while the band played something about trucks.

Third floor. East end.

The studio where I'd walked in on him barefoot, ten months ago, with a blindfold in my hand.

The canvases were gone, packed for New York. The wall of windows was black, with the lanterns floating below.

I took the black lace out of my pocket.

He looked at it.

"I thought you were done with that."

"I'm done hiding behind it," I said. "That's different."

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