My Father's Best Friend Fixed My Roof, Then Never Left My Kitchen novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Porch Swing

Milan's POV

She walked the porch boards until the streetlight came on, and I let her.

I stood at the top of the steps with my hands in my back pockets.

I watched her go from the swing to the rail and back.

She was angry at Frank, and at me, and at the kitchen chair she'd knocked over.

She was also, I could see, so close to the edge of something that I was afraid to say a word.

At ten I went out to the truck and got the wool blanket off the seat.

The street was dark.

Across the road the neighbor's television threw blue light on her front curtains, and a dog barked once, three houses down.

I sat on the swing, and I put the blanket across my knees.

"Come here," I said.

She stopped at the rail.

"You said where the street can hear," she said.

"I did."

"They can hear the whole thing, Milan."

"Then they'll hear it," I said.

She came across the boards in her socks.

I had sat in the dark outside that house for thirty nights.

I had sat in a truck at the end of that driveway with the engine off and the window cracked.

I had looked at the yellow square of the kitchen.

Some nights I saw her cross it.

Some nights she stood at the sink with her back to me, washing one cup.

I put both hands on the wheel and held it.

I was fifty-four years old, and I was sitting in the dark outside a dying friend's house, wanting his daughter.

I had never in my life been so ashamed of anything.

I'd also never wanted anything so much, and I'd had to carry both of those at once.

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