Chapter 14: Hundred and Forty

We drove to Waldburg Street at six, and Romy parked the truck at the curb and did not get out.

"Say something," I said.

"I'm trying to remember how to be a person who walks up to her mother's door and says this."

"You could just say hello."

"Hello is not what we came for."

"No," I said. "But it's how it starts."

She laughed, and her hand was shaking when I took it.

We went up the steps together.

June opened the door before we knocked.

She was in her school cardigan with the lanyard still around her neck, and she looked at our joined hands and then at our faces.

She did not look surprised.

"Come in," she said. "I made too much chicken."

My father was at the table with his reading glasses on a cord, working a crossword with a pencil.

He glanced up, and the pencil stopped.

"Sit down, both of you," he said. "You look like you're about to report a collision."

We sat.

The chicken sat between us, steaming, and nobody touched it.

I had practiced the speech in the truck.

I had it in three parts, with numbers.

"Dad, June," I said. "I'm not marrying Troy."

My father put his pencil down.

"I told him this afternoon. He's the one who started it, in a way, and I'll explain that later. But I need you to know the rest first."

I looked at Romy.

She nodded, white to the lips.

"I'm in love with Romy," I said. "She's in love with me. It's real, and we're not sorry."

Nobody said anything.

The kitchen clock ticked over the stove.

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