My Stepfather and His Friends novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Her Last Words
Warren looked at the phone for a long time.
He didn't reach for it.
He set his cold coffee on the plans table, very carefully.
"I won't lie to you," he said.
"That would be new."
"I deserve that."
"Then say it."
He turned back to the window, and I watched his shoulders rise and fall.
"Three days before she died," he said, "the hospice nurse left us alone."
I didn't move.
"Your mother couldn't lift her head by then. She told me to sit on the bed. She held my wrist."
"What did she say?"
"She said, 'Tessa will never ask for anything.'"
The study smelled of paper and old pencil shavings.
"She said you'd sit in a room your whole life and wait to be handed what you wanted. She said you'd done it since you were a girl."
His voice was steady, and it was costing him.
"Then she said, 'Make her want something for herself.'"
I put the phone down on the desk, because my hand had started to shake.
"That's all?"
"That's all she said about it. I asked her what she meant. She closed her eyes."
"And you decided what she meant."
"I decided I'd failed her the first year." He faced me again. "You moved in. You worked at that desk all day. You ate dinner standing up. You never once asked me for a thing."
"I wasn't allowed to ask. You were grieving too."
"You were a grown woman living in a sewing room with a wall you could hear through."
"I liked that room."
"You hid in that room."
He was right, and it made me angry.
"So you put three men in a den and told them to talk about my body."
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