My Stepbrother Is My Secret novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Courtyard

"Not from here," I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

"From my old door," I said. "The real way. All forty-one steps."

He smiled slowly.

"Yes, ma'am."

We went down the dark west wing hallway inside the house, to my old childhood bedroom.

Behind my father's door I could hear him snoring.

It was empty now except for the marks on the doorframe where he'd measured me every birthday.

I opened the door to the arcade.

The courtyard was full of light.

White lights on every pillar.

Candles around the dry fountain.

The bougainvillea black and red against the glow.

It was the middle of the night on Christmas, and it looked like noon.

I'd stood in this doorway at two in the morning a hundred times.

Barefoot. Holding my breath. Counting.

I took Mateo's hand.

"One," I said.

We went under the arcade.

"Two. Three. Four."

Past the bougainvillea, where I'd hidden from my father with thorns in my shoulder.

Out into the open courtyard.

"Eleven. Twelve."

Past the fountain and its candles.

The third flagstone past the fountain was right in front of me.

I looked at it.

Then I stepped on it, hard, on purpose.

It rocked and clicked, loud as a dropped spoon.

Mateo laughed out loud.

His laugh echoed off all three wings of the house.

Nobody yelled.

Nobody came.

I glanced at the kitchen window.

There was a shape behind the glass in a Christmas sweater, holding up a phone.

My father.

He lowered the phone fast.

Then he lifted it again and took another picture.

"Your father's taking pictures of us," Mateo said.

"Let him."

"Forty-one," I said at the end of the east arcade, at his old door.

Then we kept walking, around the end of the wing, along the pool lit blue from underneath, to the casita.

His door now.

He'd left the lamp on inside.

The radio was on low, still on Abuelo's station.

Abuelo's reading chair in the corner.

The bed from Mateo's old room under the window, with a new quilt one of my aunts had brought.

On the wall, me at eight, holding the plumb bob.

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