Desperate for Approval novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Fruit at the Door

I read his seven pages that night, once, at the kitchen table, and I did not answer them.

He had written every line out in full, as I had taught him to.

On the last page he asked if he might see where Grandma lived.

I put the letter in the drawer with the stack of bank statements and the red notebook and went to bed.

Moving day was a Saturday in June, the day we left the rental with the brick-wall window for the apartment on the deed.

Brandon drove the truck, a borrowed one with a dent in the door.

He carried the boxes up from the street, one stack at a time.

Grandma supervised from the curb.

Kelsey came on the first, as she had promised.

She stood at the curb with two bags of potting soil on her hip.

I wrote her a receipt, and she folded it into her pocket.

Grandma had been in her new bedroom for an hour.

She had set the two photographs of my mother on the dresser, with the lamp and the tin.

The sun came in the south windows and lay across the oak all the way to the closet.

"This is a better floor than that old lobby," she said.

"It's wood, Grandma."

"Honest wood. You can tell."

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