One Tent My Forbidden Stepbrother novel · Chapter 12 of 24
Chapter 12: The Duffel
Dad did not say a word until they were in the tent.
He sat down on the edge of his cot, and the canvas creaked.
He looked at his two sons standing in the doorway.
"Sit," he said.
They sat on the bedroll, a careful yard apart.
Dad reached under the cot and pulled out his old green duffel.
It was the one he took to every conference, with a broken zipper he had been meaning to fix for ten years.
He unzipped it.
He took out a sleeping bag, rolled tight in its stuff sack, with a luggage tag on the cord.
He took out another.
Then he took out a folded green tent in a canvas bag, and laid all three on the floor between them.
Blaine stared at them.
The tag on the nearest cord was in Blaine's own handwriting.
BLAINE. ROOM 2.
"I packed those," Blaine said.
"You did."
"I put them behind the cooler."
"You did that too." Dad rubbed his beard. "I took them out at the gas station in Alder. You went in for coffee and the good chips. It took four minutes."
Perry said, very quietly, "Dad."
"I'm getting to it."
"You took the sleeping bags."
"I took the sleeping bags, and the second tent, and I put them in this bag, and I told Blaine at the ridge that he'd forgotten." Dad looked at the tent bag, not at either of them. "I'm sorry about that part. He told the truth and I let you both think he was careless."
Blaine had gone white around the mouth.
"Why?" Perry asked.
"Because she asked me to."
Nobody moved.
A fly buzzed against the canvas.
"The last good night she had," Dad said. "About ten days before. She was lucid, and cross, and she had me sit down. She said, those two boys are never going to say a word to each other. Not in forty years. Not unless there's only one blanket."
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