Chapter 7: The Attic

I went home with my father because it was the only way to keep watching my sister.

That was what I told Cal on the landing, with a duffel bag over my shoulder.

"Text me every night," he said. "Just a single answer. I'll know if it's the wrong one."

"What's the right word?"

"Anything that isn't fine."

My old bedroom was at the end of the upstairs hall.

I had been picturing it for twenty minutes in the car, the narrow bed, the poster of a lighthouse.

My mother opened the door with a bright, nervous smile.

The bed was gone.

In its place stood an easel, a drafting table and a row of canvases with paint still wet on them.

Maisie's paintings of the river hung where the lighthouse had been.

"We needed the light for her studio," my mother said. "You'd already moved out."

I looked at the paintings.

They were good. They were very good.

"So where do I sleep?"

"The attic room! Your father fixed it up." She sounded proud. "It's cozy."

The attic had a cot, a space heater and a window the size of a cookbook.

I put my bag on the cot and sat down, and it creaked.

Behind me, my father said from the stairs, "It's quiet up here. You'll rest."

"It's an attic, Dad."

"Be grateful we're giving you anything." He said it gently, and that was the worst part. "Your sister has been very understanding about this."

"Has she?"

"She doesn't complain. She never has."

He went back downstairs.

I sat on the cot, and for the first time in a long while I let myself be angry in a small room with no one watching.

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