I Couldn't Pay My Three Landlords, So I Gave Them a Baby novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Boiler Room

Cas's POV

I was bleeding the radiators in the basement at one in the morning.

I could not lie in a bed on that floor and listen to her on the next one up.

The boiler ticked.

It was a Burnham from 1962 that my father had refused to replace, and the room smelled of hot dust and old iron.

I had a wrench in my hand and nothing to turn.

The door at the top of the stairs opened, and I knew her step before I saw her socks.

She came down slowly, in her gray sweatpants and an old CTA sweatshirt, with her braid over one shoulder.

She stopped on the last stair.

"You told Lenny thirty days," Ren said.

"I told him what he needed to hear," I said.

"You told him I'm out in thirty days," she said.

"I told him to go home."

"That isn't the same thing you said."

I put the wrench down on the workbench.

I had known this was coming since the truck, and I had known I'd have no answer ready.

"You signed that notice," she said. "In your pretty square capitals."

"The week after we buried him, you raised my rent four hundred and fifty dollars, and you didn't say a word to me about it."

"I know."

"I sat with your father every morning for six months," she said. "Every morning, Cas."

"I came off a ten-hour run, with my mother dying, and I sat in that kitchen and I buttered his toast."

"And the first thing you said to me after the funeral was a receipt."

Her voice cracked on the last word.

She came down off the stair and stood in front of me with her fists closed.

"You never said thank you," she said. "You never said my name. You put a piece of paper under my door."

"I couldn't," I said.

"Couldn't what?"

"Look at you."

She stared at me.

"I'd come into that kitchen and you'd be at his elbow, and every time he laughed it was at something you said," I said.

"I was out on a burst main on Archer, earning the hospice bill. I missed all of it. I missed him dying. You didn't."

The words were out before I could stop them.

I had never said them, not even to my brothers.

Ren's face changed.

"Cas," she said.

"Don't," I said.

"I didn't know that's what it was."

"It's what it is."

I turned away from her and put my hands flat on the bench.

"I raised your rent because I was counting every dollar, and because it was easier to count than to say your name."

"That's the truth. It isn't a good one."

Behind me, she was silent for so long that I heard the boiler tick twice.

Then she put her hand between my shoulder blades.

"I'm still angry," she said.

"You should be," I said.

"I'm going to be angry in a minute, too."

"All right."

"And I want you anyway," she said. "That's what's so stupid about it. I'm furious and I want you so much I can't sleep."

I turned around.

She stood a foot away with her chin up and her eyes wet and wide.

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