My Stepfather and His Friends novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wall
Tessa hears her stepfather's three friends talk about her through the den wall, walks in, and tells them to say it to her face.
I could hear them through the wall.
It was a little past eleven on a Friday, and my stepfather's whiskey night was in its third hour.
Warren built this house himself, and he'd skimped on the insulation between the den and the room I slept in.
That room used to be my mother's sewing room.
I'd moved into it fourteen months ago, the week after her funeral.
I'd been listening to football and poker and arguments about permits ever since.
On weeknights Warren shut the den door.
On Fridays he left it open.
I had noticed that months ago and never asked why.
Tonight the voices were lower than usual, and I stopped typing.
"I'm just saying it, because none of you will," Graham said. "She's turned into a stunning woman."
Graham Pryor was a divorce lawyer with a sharp jaw and a stare.
"Did you see her at the pool today? Warren, that swimsuit should come with a warning label."
I looked down at my laptop and my own bare knees.
I'd been in that swimsuit most of that afternoon, reading in a lounge chair.
Four men had grilled steaks across the lawn.
"Watch your mouth," Owen said.
Owen was the surgeon, the careful one, the one who always cut his steak into exactly equal pieces.
"She's Warren's family."
"Stepdaughter," Warren said.
My stomach dropped, and it was not because of Graham.
Warren's voice was flat and slow. "She's my wife's daughter. We were married five years. She's not my blood."
"That doesn't change what she is to you," Owen said.
"I know what it changes and what it doesn't."
Ice clinked in a glass.
Nobody said anything for a few seconds.
Caleb hadn't spoken all night.
Caleb was Warren's foreman and his oldest friend, a big quiet man who said barely a dozen words per visit.
I heard him set his drink down on the table.
"Then you don't mind," Graham said, "if I find out whether she'd say yes."
I shut the laptop.
I sat on the edge of my bed in an old t-shirt and sleep shorts, listening to four men I had known for five years decide what I might say yes to.
They'd come to my mother's wedding.
Caleb had carried her casket.
Owen had held my hand at the graveside and told me to call him anytime.
None of them had ever asked me a single question about what I wanted.
So I stood up.
I didn't put on a robe.
I walked down the hall barefoot and stopped in the open doorway of the den.
All four of them turned.
Graham had the decency to look startled for a moment.
Then he leaned back in the leather chair.
Owen stood up so fast his chair scraped. "Tessa. We're so sorry. That wasn't."
"You built this house, Warren," I said. "You know how thin that wall is."
Warren sat in his usual spot by the window, a glass in his big scarred hand, and looked at me.
"I know," he said.
Caleb stared at the floor.
I crossed the room and took Graham's glass out of his fingers.
It was half full.
I drank it in one swallow, and the rye burned all the way down.
"That's my mother's bottle," I said. "It came from her father's cabinet."
"Yes," Warren said quietly. "It is."
I set the empty glass on the table in front of Graham.
"You said you wanted to find out whether I'd say yes."
"I did say that." His eyes didn't leave my face.
"So ask me."
"Tessa," Owen said.
"I'm talking to Graham."
Graham smiled slowly.
"I said you've turned stunning," he said. "I should have said it to you."
He didn't blink.
"You're the best thing that's walked through this house in years, and I've been thinking about it since the wedding."
"Graham," Warren said, and it came out low and rough.
But he didn't stand up.
He didn't tell me to go to bed.
I looked at the table, because I couldn't look at him.
There were five glasses on it.
Four men, and four were in use.
The fifth sat on a folded napkin in front of the empty chair beside Warren's, clean, with ice already melting in the bottom.
Someone had poured it before I walked in.
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