Exiled for Saying No, I Came Back and Took the Boss's Chair novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Eleven Decembers

Ronan's POV

On the first Sunday of December I sat on my father's porch on Strawberry Hill for the first time in seven years.

He brought out two chipped mugs of tea and set one on the rail by my hand.

He lowered himself into his chair with both hands on the cane.

"I said a hard thing at your mother's wake," he said.

"You did," I said.

"I told you the smoker was a boy's game and you'd come home and run the house when you were done playing."

"I remember," I said.

"You said you'd sooner be a cook than be me. I told you not to come back."

"I remember that too."

He turned the cane a quarter turn in his hands.

"That's the one I lose sleep on," he said. "But it's the second one that cost the most."

I waited.

"The week the Cusumano girl went on the train, a man sat in this chair."

He looked at the empty one beside it.

"He told me she'd laughed at your brother and called us dirt."

"Ignazio," I said.

"I believed him because I wanted to be angry at somebody."

He drank.

"Then you left. I let you go because I thought you chose a cook's life over a Costigan's name."

The wind moved the dead leaves across the boards.

"You were choosing a girl," my father said. "Weren't you?"

"I didn't know her."

"You didn't have to."

I drank the tea.

It had gone cold, and I drank it anyway.

"I let one man carry my words for thirty years," he said. "I never once asked to hear them from the mouth that said them."

"I know," I said.

"That's what I lost, Ronan. Two sons' worth of years."

"I've got years left," I said.

"Go and sit in her kitchen, then. In your own name."

"I'm in her kitchen," I said.

"And in her bed," he said dryly. "Your brother told me. It was in the market before noon."

I did not say anything.

"Do you love her?"

"Yes," I said.

"Has she said it?"

"No," I said.

"Then she's waiting to see whether the door stays open," my father said. "Stay in it."

At midnight a message came on my phone.

Shop. Back door.

I drove down to the City Market with the heater on high and the streets empty.

The dock light was on, and the roll-up door stood a foot off the concrete.

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