Chapter 23: Her Own Door

The brick house on Terrace Avenue became mine on the third Saturday of March.

I signed for it at a lawyer's office with my own pen, in my own name only.

Nobody else's signature was on the page.

By six that evening the living room held a couch, half a dozen boxes, Norma's husband's casserole, and Norma.

"You need a rule for the casserole," Norma said, handing me a fork.

"Everyone in this house eats it once a month. It's the law."

"Whose law?"

"Mine. I'm the landlord of your morale."

Her husband went up the stairs with a lamp under each arm and called back that he was going to bed at eight.

"It's ten to," Norma said. "He's early."

Ben carried the last box in from the car and set it down in the hall.

It was marked KITCHEN in his square handwriting. It rattled.

"Those are the glasses," I said.

"I wrapped them."

"In what?"

"My shirts."

Norma laughed so hard she had to sit down on the arm of the couch.

They left at eight.

Norma hugged me at the door for a long time, and when she let go her eyes were wet.

"All these years I waited for you to be happy in a room," she said. "Look at that. A room."

She went down the steps with her husband and did not look back.

The house went quiet.

I walked through it once, slowly, switching on lamps.

The kitchen had a window over the sink that faced the yard.

A bare cherry tree stood out there, still holding a little snow in its forks.

I stood at the window a long time.

Ben came and stood behind me, close enough for me to feel the warmth of him through my sweater.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Broken Oaths in White Coats from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.