Mom! Don't Pull The Curtain! novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: What He Said in the Hall

Susanna's POV

Justin's old bedroom had a twin bed, a shelf of swimming trophies, and a poster of a periodic table.

He had not slept in it since he was eighteen.

Stanley had put clean sheets on it that afternoon, without a word, and Justin had stood looking at them for a long time.

I shut the door behind us and leaned on it.

The house below us was loud with Mom and Stanley cooking for ten people who had not been invited.

"Say it," I said.

"Susanna."

"Lena said ask. I'm asking."

He sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees and looked at his hands.

"The Monday before," he said, "my father came into my office and sat down in the chair he never uses. He said Carol was bringing her daughter Tuesday, and she'd had a hard year."

"You've told me that part."

"I haven't told you what I did after. I read your name on the Tuesday schedule, and I went and stood in the hallway outside room three, alone, because I knew your mother would be in there with you, and I wanted to be sure."

"Sure of what?"

"That I could be kind and nothing else."

He looked up.

"I said it out loud. I said, 'Keep your hands in your pockets, Hostetler. She is Carol's daughter. Do not want her.'"

I stared at him.

"Is that on the recording?"

"No. There's no microphone in the hallway. Lena was at the far end of it, and she heard me. She has been saving it for the right room."

"That's what you were ashamed of? That you tried not to?"

"I broke the promise in under half an hour." He gave a short, awful laugh. "I stood outside that door and swore an oath to myself, and then you looked at me from that table, and I forgot my own name."

"You said my name."

"I said it very softly. It was the only word I remembered."

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