My Sister Stole My Second Life novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Study

Mr. Stanhope's study smelled of pipe tobacco he hadn't smoked in twenty years.

Dark wood, green lamps, a wall of books nobody but him was allowed to touch.

I'd been in it once, on the first night, to sign a form.

He sat down behind his desk.

He didn't ask us to sit.

So we stood side by side on the old red rug, not touching.

Thatcher still had the navy coat over his arm.

Mr. Stanhope looked at it.

"Put that down, son. You look like a coat rack."

Thatcher put it on a chair.

His father folded his hands on the blotter.

"I watched the video again on Tuesday," he said. "The one from the crosswalk."

"Dad..."

"Let me finish. I've been practicing this since Tuesday, and I don't practice things."

Thatcher shut his mouth.

"I watched a fourteen-year-old with a phone do more than that man's whole street did in thirty years," Mr. Stanhope said.

He took off his reading glasses.

"Then I watched the sink video again. I hadn't, since October. I couldn't."

He looked at his son.

"You were in the doorway."

"I know."

"So was I," Mr. Stanhope said.

Neither of us said anything.

"I laughed at that girl's jokes for three weeks," he said. "I let her sit in this one's chair. I told you not in this house, and I thought that made me a careful man. It made me a man in a doorway."

The clock on the mantel ticked.

"I'm not going to change the papers," he said. "Maisie is my daughter on paper. She'll stay my daughter on paper. I signed for her, and I don't take back things I sign."

My throat closed up.

"And people will say what they say. That we took in a girl for our son." He put his glasses back on. "I'll tell them she took us in. It'll be closer to the truth."

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