The Eight Year Ledger novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Pancakes

I stood at the window in my socks and looked back at him.

He raised his coffee cup at me.

I let the curtain fall.

Downstairs, the fort had collapsed in the night, and the kids had moved to the kitchen table in their blankets.

Beau was at the stove in a T-shirt and sweatpants, pouring batter.

"Morning," he said, without turning around. "Gabe wants dinosaur shapes. I can do circles and Ohio."

"He'll take Ohio."

"I'll take Ohio," Gabe agreed.

Dottie looked at me over her orange juice.

"You slept over," she said.

"I did."

"In Dad's room."

The kitchen went very quiet, except for the batter hissing.

Beau's back went still.

"The fort was full," I said.

Dottie considered this.

"Fair," she said, and went back to her juice.

Beau flipped a pancake and didn't drop it, which I thought showed real character.

I poured myself coffee and stood next to him and said, very low, "Todd's across the street."

"I saw. Since five-thirty."

"You didn't wake me."

"You were asleep for the first time in seven weeks," he said. "He can wait. He's got coffee."

He slid a pancake shaped roughly like Ohio onto Gabe's plate.

Gabe studied it. "Where's Cincinnati?"

Beau poked a chocolate chip into the bottom left corner.

"There."

Gabe ate Cincinnati first.

The doorbell rang at seven-forty.

Then somebody knocked with a fist, three times, hard enough to rattle the little window in the door.

Gabe stopped chewing.

Beau turned off the burner.

"I'll get it," I said.

"It's my door," Beau said mildly, and got it.

Todd stood on the step in his board-member fleece.

He'd shaved. He'd combed his hair. He was groomed within an inch of his life, ready for a camera crew.

He looked past Beau to me in the hallway.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Eight Year Ledger from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.