My Stepbrother Is My Secret novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: Christmas Eve Again

My father looked at me.

The casita had been locked for sixteen months.

It was where Abuelo lived his last year, after the hospital.

A hospital bed by the window. His radio. His reading chair.

Nobody had gone in since the funeral.

Not even me.

"It's your father's house," I said. "Ask him."

"It's your grandfather's casita," my father said. "Ask her."

Mateo looked between us.

"I'm asking both of you."

I thought about the casita.

The window toward the pool.

Abuelo in the bed, the radio on the Tejano station, telling me what to write.

"He'd want someone in it," I said finally. "He hated a building standing empty. He said it's bad for the pipes."

My father laughed through his nose.

"One dollar a month," he said. "And you fix the pipes."

"Two dollars," Mateo said. "I don't want favors."

"Ay, Dios. Engineers."

On the morning of Christmas Eve we opened the casita.

I turned the key myself.

It stuck, then gave.

The air inside was stale and cool and smelled faintly of his aftershave, still.

The hospital bed was gone. The medical company took it back last year.

But his radio was on the windowsill.

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