They Fought Over Who Had to Keep Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Boxes

Lacey goes back for her things and gets Hattie's overnight bag handed to her in front of the neighbors.

I opened Grandma's envelope at six the next morning, sitting on her couch in my own damp jeans.

It held one index card.

Lacey. Nobody gets to hand you off. Not even my son. The faucet drips, let Crispin fix it. Love, Grandma.

I read it three times and put it in my backpack, behind the key.

By noon I was standing in the parking lot of my mother's apartment complex with Crispin's truck idling behind me.

He had slept four hours after his shift and driven me over without being asked.

"I can go up alone," I said.

"I know." He set the parking brake. "I'll carry boxes."

My mother opened the door before I knocked.

She had the same cardigan on from yesterday and a coffee in her hand, and her eyes went straight past me to Crispin.

"Who is this?"

"My landlord. He's helping me move my things."

"Your landlord." She said it flatly. "Lacey, you have been gone one night. You are not moving anything."

"I need my clothes and my laptop."

"You need to come in and sit down like an adult."

"I am an adult," I said. "That was the point of yesterday."

Down in the lot, a car door slammed.

Dad was crossing the pavement in his golf quarter-zip, car keys in his fist, wearing the face he used on clients.

"There she is," he called. "There's my girl. We've been worried sick."

He had not called me once.

I had checked my phone twice on the drive.

He reached us and put a hand out to Crispin, and he did not just shake it.

He held on to it with both of his.

"Crispin. Good to see you, man. I can't thank you enough for watching out for her."

Crispin took his hand back after a moment.

"She's a tenant, Mr. Swanson. I'm not doing you a favor."

"Of course. Of course you're not." Dad laughed, a little too fast.

Behind him, two neighbors had come out onto their balconies.

One of them held a watering can and wasn't watering anything.

My mother lowered her voice.

"Lacey, inside. You're making a scene."

"I'm standing in a parking lot."

"You walked out on your own birthday cake. In front of your sister."

"You didn't sing," I said.

She blinked.

"What?"

"Nobody sang. You lit the candles and forgot them, and then you and Dad talked about my car insurance for forty minutes. Hattie put her face in the cake and you both laughed at her instead of at me."

"That's not fair."

"Which part?"

"We were trying to work out logistics."

"You were trying to work out which of you was stuck with me."

Nobody said anything.

Dad looked at his shoes.

My mother's face went pink to the hairline, and then she drew herself up.

"Fine. If you're so grown, tell me who gets Hattie off the bus on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

There it was.

For two years I had left the pharmacy at three on Tuesdays and Thursdays to walk Hattie home from the bus, make her a snack, and do her spelling words until Mom got in at seven.

Nobody had ever asked me.

It was just on the calendar.

"That's what this is about," I said slowly. "Neither of you wanted to keep me. You both wanted to keep the babysitter."

"That is not what I said," Mom said.

"It's what you meant."

"Lace," Dad said, "don't be like this."

"Which one of you has a better offer for Tuesday?"

Neither of them answered me, and above us the woman with the watering can finally tipped it over a geranium.

I went inside.

Crispin came behind me and said nothing.

My room had one twin bed and a desk, with Hattie's bed pushed against the other wall.

She was sitting on her bed with a chocolate stain on her shirt and the purple tablet in her lap.

When she saw me, she dropped it and ran.

She hit me at the waist hard enough to knock me back into the doorframe.

"You didn't come back," she said into my sweater.

"I'm here now."

"I saved you a piece. It's gross. It has hair in it."

"Then I'll eat the part without hair."

She laughed and wiped her nose on me.

Crispin took the two big boxes without looking at either of us, and when he came back for the third he put his hand briefly on the top of Hattie's head.

She stared up at him.

"Are you the man with the building?"

"I'm the man with the building."

"Does it have a yard?"

"It has a stoop and a fire escape."

"Cool," Hattie said, and nodded as if he had passed.

By the time we got downstairs, both my parents were standing by Crispin's truck in a close, tense little line.

For the first time in two years, they looked like they were on the same side of something.

Mom came forward with a purple overnight bag.

It was Hattie's, the one with the faded unicorn on it.

She held it out to me by the straps.

"If you want to play house," she said, "take your sister Friday through Sunday. I need my weekends."

Dad nodded at once.

"That works for me. Better than the calendar."

I looked from one of them to the other, and neither of them looked back at me.

"Weekends are yours now," Mom said.

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