They Broke Me, I Hid His Son novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Every Name

Rocco was waiting beside bench fourteen at eight the next morning, with his coat over his arm and nobody to stop him.

My team stood in a half circle around their coffees.

There were five of them, and none of them had ever seen a man in a black coat look that nervous.

"Who is this?" the youngest asked in German, and then in English.

"My stepbrother," I said.

Someone whistled low.

"He wants to say something to me," I said. "He asked to say it in front of the people I work with."

Rocco hadn't asked that.

I had decided it on the walk in.

He looked at me, and then at the five faces, and then at the floor.

"You said you would hear all of them," he said quietly.

"All of them. Out loud."

"Then I'll start."

His left hand went to his cuff, and again he put it into his pocket.

"The Sack," he said.

The room went very still.

"That was the first week. You came down to breakfast in a blue dress and I said it across the table, and my father didn't look up."

"Go on."

"Hippo."

"Louder."

"Hippo," he said. "Dinner plate. Wide load. The Bellandi buffet."

The youngest postdoc put her cup down.

"I used to move your chair when you were about to sit. Twice you fell. I took your plate from the table when you were halfway through. I locked you out in the rain the night before your thesis defense, and I stood at the window and watched you stand there."

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