Chapter 23: Closing Day

On Wednesday night I stood in the Oakmont driveway for the first time since the party.

Luca stood beside me, and Franco stood on the other side with his hands jammed in his jacket.

The house looked the same.

Every window was lit, and there was a For Sale sign staked in the lawn with a red SOLD strip across it.

Next door, a curtain moved, and then three more across the street.

Nobody came out.

Dad was waiting at the front door in his shirtsleeves.

He did not look at me.

He tapped the lock with his phone, and it chirped and opened.

"Four names on this app," I said. "Mine is not one of them."

"The bank has frozen it," he said. "It works until tomorrow."

I stepped over the threshold.

The hall smelled like furniture polish and cold coffee.

Mom sat on the bottom stair with her hands between her knees, and she stood up when I came in.

She said nothing.

I walked past her, down the hall to the basement door.

It was a plain white door with a brass knob, and the stairs behind it were steep and unfinished.

At the bottom, in the same corner where I had left it, lay the air mattress.

It was still flat, with the pump beside it and a folded blanket someone had put on top.

I had not seen the blanket.

"Mom put that down," Franco said quietly behind me. "The next morning. She said she couldn't look at it bare."

I didn't answer.

Dad came down the stairs one step at a time.

He stopped at the bottom and looked at the concrete floor, the bare bulb, and the dryer in the corner.

"Turn on the pump," I said.

He knelt, plugged it in, and it whined to life.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Gave My Sister My Room, Now They've Lost Everything from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.