To Be a Virtuous Wife, According to the Manual novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Mother in the Next Room
My mother arrived on the twenty-third with two suitcases, a fruitcake and her own sheets.
"I do not trust other people's linen," she said, handing Hal the cake as if it were a baby.
She slept in the spare room on a daybed we had borrowed from Marlene.
The spare room shares a wall with our bedroom.
I had measured it. I am a bookkeeper. The wall was plaster, three inches thick, and I was not comforted by the number.
On Christmas Eve we went to the candlelight service and sat in one pew, the three of us.
My mother sang every verse without the hymnal.
Hal held my hand under my coat the whole time.
At nine-thirty we drank cocoa in the parlor, and my mother took off her gloves and put them on the arm of the chair.
"I shall retire," she said. "Good night, Harold. Good night, Dolores."
"Good night, Mother."
"I sleep very soundly," she said, and went up the stairs, and the third step creaked under her.
Hal and I sat very still for ten minutes by the mantel clock.
Then we went up, one at a time, avoiding the third stair.
Our door shut with a click.
He turned to me in the dark bedroom, and he was grinning.
"She says she sleeps soundly," he whispered.
"She also says she has never told a lie."
"Dolores."
"I know."
"Rule 6," he said into my hair. "Low, soft, pleasant."
"That one," I whispered, "I can do all night."
He kissed me, and I pulled him down onto the bed.
The bed answered.
It was an iron-framed bed with a spring older than both of us.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of To Be a Virtuous Wife, According to the Manual are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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