My Sister Stole My Second Life novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Backpack

Dena said yes before he finished the question.

She said it three times, actually, and then she hugged him across the register.

Thatcher patted her back twice and came out onto the sidewalk.

I was still standing there with my phone in my hand.

"Spying on me?" he said.

"Getting a job. You were in the way."

"Where?"

"The library. Night desk."

He frowned like the word was foreign.

"You live in a house with eleven bedrooms and a cook, and you're going to shelve books at one in the morning."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because then they're my books."

He didn't have an answer for that.

He walked back up the hill ahead of me and didn't wait.

Three weeks later, on a Thursday, I came home from my shift at a quarter past two.

Somebody was sitting on the curb outside the Stanhopes' iron gate.

Hood up, knees to her chest, an empty backpack hanging open beside her.

I knew the shape of her before she looked up.

Dena's face was blotchy.

For once, she wasn't crying on purpose.

"He took it," she said. "All of it. My tips. The hundred. Everything."

"Lyle."

"He came home drunk and dumped my bag out on the kitchen floor. He said rent's due and I eat, don't I." She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Mom just stood there."

"She will. Every time."

Dena stared at me.

"You never said."

"You never asked."

"How did you do it?" she said. "Three years in that house. How did you keep anything?"

I sat down on the curb, not too close.

The street was empty and the leaves were starting to turn.

"My left shoe," I said. "Under the insole. He'd search the bag, the coat, the mattress. He never once thought to look at my feet."

She stared at me in shock.

"That's it? A shoe?"

"That's it. Plus I ate at the diner because the cook fed me. Plus I never cried where he could see it, because he likes that."

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