The Boss Said My Father Drowned His Brother, So He Took Me to Stand in the Water novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Folgers Can

The church women went quiet when they saw me, and I let them.

I finished laying the cloth.

I did not look at the pantry again.

That night I told Stellan I wanted to go home.

He was in the study with a ledger open and his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.

He took them off slowly.

"Home," he said.

"To Lakeside, to my mother's duplex," I said. "I want to get something."

"What?"

"A can in the pantry," I said. "My mother kept her letters in it, and every card my father ever sent."

"I'll drive you."

"I know you will," I said.

"Joel won't."

"I know that too."

He stood.

He did not ask what the church women had said.

I had seen him in the hall when I came out of the kitchen, and I knew Pirjo's women talked.

He took his coat from the hook and held mine for me.

I let him.

It was a short drive down the hill into the old neighborhood, past the grain elevators and a row of narrow frame houses with their porch lights burning.

The duplex stood at the end of a block, a two-story house with green siding and a bad gutter.

My mother's half had been mine for five years.

I had not been inside it in nine days.

Stellan parked at the curb and left the engine running.

"I'll wait here," he said.

"You can come in," I said.

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