Slapping Her Out of Her Delusion novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Midnight in the Foyer

I went up the lawn at midnight with the compass in my fist.

The kitchen door was unlocked, and the foyer was dark except for one lamp under my father's portrait.

Gwen sat on the bottom stair in a flannel nightdress, with her hair flat on one side and her feet bare on the marble.

There was nobody else in the room.

She didn't stand, and she didn't cry.

"You came alone," she said.

"You asked."

"Nobody ever does what I ask when I ask it plainly."

She said it flatly, as a fact about the weather.

I sat on the third stair, a careful yard away from her.

"I watched him from the gate every afternoon," Gwen said, looking at the portrait. "He'd stand in the study window with a cup of tea, and he'd lift his hand."

"I saw him do it too."

"After I turned eleven he only waved, Lydia, for thirteen years, and he never once came down the lawn."

Her voice cracked on the last word and she let it.

"I was eleven when I understood the wave was all I was getting. So I wrote a book where somebody opens the door."

"And you made me the cruel sister."

"You were the one who got to go in."

I opened my mouth, and she shook her head.

"Don't say you didn't know. You didn't, and I didn't either. We were two girls in the same story and neither of us had the whole page."

The clock in the hall struck the quarter.

"You were never going to forgive me," she said. "Tell me the truth."

"I don't know yet."

"That's the first honest thing anyone in this house has said to me." She turned her head. "Kneel."

I looked at her.

"In the foyer, in front of everyone, you wouldn't. Now there's only me and him." She tipped her chin at the portrait. "Kneel and say it."

It took me a moment to understand she meant it.

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