Taken in My Sleep by My Stepfather David and His Friends novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Loud One Goes Quiet

Bernard's POV

I got my jeans on backward and had to take them off again.

"Bernard," David said.

"I'm going. I'm going."

"Don't go out first."

"I'm the one who laughs first. It's my entire personality."

Zelda was already pulling on her mother's cardigan over a sweater, with her hair a mess and her mouth swollen.

She looked at me, and some of the fear went out of her face.

"Stay behind me," she said.

"Kid, I'm a fire captain. I've walked into worse than a banker's son."

"Bernard."

"All right."

We went out onto the porch in the cold, all five of us, in our socks.

Clarence was standing in the yard beside the Volvo with the headlights still on.

He wasn't in a suit.

He wore a wrinkled sweater and no coat, and he had not shaved, and in the glare he looked ten years older than he had on Friday.

His phone was in his right hand.

"Zelda," he said hoarsely.

"You're trespassing."

"I drove six hours."

"Then you should turn around and drive six more."

I took a breath to say something funny.

Nothing came.

I looked at him, and I couldn't find the joke, because he looked like a man who had lost everything in the span of a weekend.

"My father froze my accounts," Clarence said. "My mother hasn't spoken to me since Saturday. The land deal fell through and the buyer's lawyers are calling me. I can't go home."

"That's not my problem," Zelda said.

"No." He held up the phone. "But this is."

David came down one step.

Zelda put her hand back, flat, without looking, and he stopped.

"I have the original," Clarence said. "Right here. I've typed the caption. One touch."

"I know what you have."

"I'll put it on every site. Your name, your face, your mother's name. I'll make sure every dentist in the state knows what the woman who cleans their teeth said on a bathroom floor."

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