Chapter 24: Friday

On Friday night I went back to my father's house.

The front door was unlocked, and I knocked anyway.

My father was in the den with the whiskey out, four glasses on the table and a fifth beside the bottle.

"That one's yours," he said, without turning around.

"I'm not drinking in the den."

"You never did." He poured it anyway. "Take it into your old room. I cleared the chair out."

I stopped in the doorway.

"Dad."

"I figured you'd want to hear it the long way."

His face was perfectly straight.

Behind him, Dex looked at the ceiling, Emmett looked at his boots, and Boone looked at me with something near panic.

"I'm going to bed at midnight," my father added. "I'm taking earplugs. I bought them at my own store."

"Okay."

"The glass is on the shelf."

It was.

A full glass of water stood on the hall shelf, right where it had stood every Friday, and I picked it up and drank half of it standing in the hall.

My old bedroom was bare.

The mattress and bookcase were gone, and only the faded wallpaper and the pencil marks on the doorframe were left.

My father had put a kitchen chair against the shared wall.

I sat down in it with the glass on my knee and the whiskey on the floor.

Through the plaster, I heard four chairs scrape.

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