My Sister's Cure Was Always My Man novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Hot Water

The Garritys were out of the lodge in fifty minutes.

I watched their cars go down the drive from the porch, my father's brake lights red in the early light.

Mom did not wave.

Aunt Gwen did. She raised one hand from the passenger window, and I raised mine.

Caleb's mother stood beside me with her arms folded.

"You did not answer me," she said.

"No, ma'am."

"Will you?"

I looked at Caleb.

He gave me a very small shake of his head.

"Not today," I said. "I'm sorry. I will tell you the truth soon. Not today."

She studied me for a long moment, and then she nodded.

"Fair enough. I would rather have it honest and late." She touched Caleb's sleeve. "I'm going to sleep for four hours in the blue room. Nobody wakes me."

She went in.

The lodge got very quiet.

We spent the day not talking about it.

I cooked the eggs. Caleb ate them in his routine order, bacon, eggs, toast, and corrected the way I stacked the plates, and I let him.

It felt like the first ordinary hour I had had in two lives.

That night, after his mother had gone to bed, we went out to the hot springs alone.

There was a thin moon over the pines.

Steam rose off the water in the cold, and I stood at the edge in a towel with my arms wrapped around myself.

"I'll turn around," Caleb said.

"I don't mind."

"Okay."

He turned around anyway, and that was how I knew how nervous he was.

I slipped into the water and sank up to my shoulders.

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