Goodbye to the Man Who Betrayed Us novel · Chapter 14 of 32
Chapter 14: Two Outcasts
"The abuse," I said. "There isn't any abuse."
"Six people in that room have eaten at my table. Not one of them asked me."
"Where are you now?" I said.
"On my own front steps."
He laughed, one short bark with nothing in it.
"My wife had the housekeeper pack two suitcases. They were waiting by the door when I got back from the board."
"It's your house."
"It's the company's house. It has been for twenty years. Taxes." He cleared his throat. "She's already posted about it. A picture of my bags. Free at last, it says. With a little bird."
I closed my eyes.
"Raymond. Get a cab."
"To where?"
"There's a spare room over the counter. It has a daybed, and it smells like mothballs."
The line was quiet a long time.
"I'm sixty-three years old," he said. "I can't be moving in with my daughter-in-law."
"Your granddaughter will be thrilled."
Another silence.
"Is there any more of those greens?"
"Get a cab."
He came at nine, in the back of an ordinary yellow taxi, with two good leather suitcases and a garment bag over his arm.
Rafael carried the suitcases up the stairs.
Raymond carried the garment bag himself and wouldn't give it up.
The spare room was my mother's sewing room.
The daybed was five foot ten.
Raymond was six foot one.
"I've slept in worse," he said finally.
"When?"
"1979. The back seat of a Pinto."
Lily came in from her room in her whale pajamas, already counting.
"Six steps from my door," she said. "Grandpa's door is six steps from my door."
"Is that good?" he asked her.
"It's very close. You can read to me."
"I don't know any books."
"I'll teach you."
He slept with his feet hanging off the end.
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