Chapter 5: Radiator

By the next Friday, the four of them had eaten dinner at six-thirty without me four nights in a row.

Nobody had said the rule was over.

They had just stopped pretending it was mine.

I got home from the clinic at seven, smelled garlic and heard Zelda laughing in the kitchen, and kept walking right past my own door.

Emmett's door was open a hand's width.

"It's open," he called. "It's always open. I told you."

His kitchen was warm and smelled like onions.

He was crouched at the radiator under the window with a little brass key and a coffee can, and he was not looking at me.

"Sit," he said. "The pot is the same pot. Eat when you're hungry. I'm bleeding the radiator, because it's been knocking all week."

"I'm hungry."

"Then eat."

I ate standing at the counter, because I could not seem to sit down, and I watched him work.

He turned the key a quarter turn.

A thin hiss came out, and then a spit of hot water into the can.

"It's done," he said. "Want to feel it?"

"Feel what?"

"The pipe. It's hot now. That's how you know it's working."

I put the bowl down.

I reached for the radiator pipe where it came up through the floor.

It was much hotter than I'd expected, and I yanked my hand back and said a word I don't say.

"Hannah."

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