My Stepfather Sold Me at the Card Table, and the Man Who Won Me Never Looked My Way novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Door Is Open

I came down for water at one in the morning in my scrubs and my socks, and he was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.

Only the stove light was on, a low orange glow.

It showed me a long shape in the chair at the head of the table with its back to the wall.

I stopped on the bottom step.

He had the bond in front of him.

I knew it by its folds, the form I had taken out of his hand.

I had left it in my parka pocket on a chair upstairs.

"I didn't take it," he said.

He said it to the table, in a low voice, before I could ask.

"Enid took it out of the coat to wash the coat. She brought it down and put it here, and I've been looking at it."

"Looking at it," I said.

"Yes."

"Is that allowed? Looking at things?"

He didn't answer.

I came into the room and filled a glass at the sink with my back to him.

I drank it standing.

The tap hissed, and the stove ticked.

When I turned around, he had both hands flat on the wood either side of the paper.

He was looking at the wall above my head.

"Sit," he said. "Please."

It was the first time he had said please to me.

I sat at the far end, with the whole length of the scrubbed table between us.

"I'm going to say some things," Cormick said. "I want you to let me finish."

I waited.

"The door of your room is not locked from outside. It never has been. There's no key to it but the bolt, and the bolt is yours."

"Enid said," I answered.

"Your own house is yours. It's in your mother's name and now in yours. Nothing I signed touches it. Dermot's debt does not touch it. I'll see to that."

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