My Dad's Best Friend Moved Into My Spare Room After His Divorce, and the Promise He Made My Father Lasted Four Days novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Gate
My father's sixtieth birthday had forty-one people, six folding tables, one banner and a brisket the size of a toddler.
I stood at the head table at one o'clock on Saturday with a paper plate in my hand, as ordered.
The banner over the patio said LENNY IS 60 (AND STILL RIGHT).
Dad sat under it in his good Huskers shirt, red-faced and blissful, with a beer sweating in his fist.
Ed stood at the grill thirty feet away with tongs and a smoking cloud around him.
Rule one was holding.
Rule eight was holding too.
Every time I glanced across the yard, he glanced back.
I took one step toward my father.
"LENNY!"
The gate slammed open.
Brad came through it in a quarter-zip the color of a dentist's office, carrying a red cooler in both arms.
A box under his chin said LORI'S THINGS.
His phone was clamped in a little rig on his shoulder, red light on.
Forty-one heads turned.
"Happy birthday, big guy!" Brad shouted. "I brought the cooler. And I brought some stuff of Lori's, because we've got a lot to clear up, and I think Lenny deserves to know exactly who's been living in his daughter's house."
My father squinted.
"Brad? You made it."
"I did, sir."
Brad set the cooler down by the cake and turned to the crowd.
He raised his voice into the voice he used on waiters.
"I don't want to make a scene. I'm just done being the only adult in this..."
I put my plate on the table.
"Brad's right about one thing," I said.
It carried.
Everybody stopped.
I walked around the head of the table until I stood beside my father's chair, and I put my hand on his shoulder.
"Dad deserves to know. So I'm telling him. Me."
Brad's mouth opened.
I didn't look at him.
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