The Son Who Returned to Expose Their Shame novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Somewhere
Gran met us in the shell driveway with her purse on her arm and a deck of cards in her hand.
Callie had dropped us and gone on to a friend's apartment downtown.
She said she needed one night where nobody was a Keene.
Gran looked at Annie's face, then at mine.
"Well," she said. "The lady next door has been begging me to come lose at gin rummy for eleven years. Tonight I'm going to let her."
"Gran, you don't have to go anywhere."
"I'm not going anywhere. I'm going forty feet." She pointed. "That's her porch light. When it goes off, I'm coming home. It doesn't go off till one. She's a night owl."
She patted Annie's cheek on her way past.
"There's ham in the icebox. Don't touch the biscuits. They're for display."
The screen door banged behind her.
Then she was a shape on the neighbor's porch, settling into a rocker, and the neighbor's laugh came across the yard.
Annie stood at the bottom of the steps and looked up at the house.
"This is your grandmother's," she said.
"Not all of it."
I took her hand.
I took her up the stairs, slow, the way she liked, through my old room, and out the far door onto the sleeping porch.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Son Who Returned to Expose Their Shame are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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