Caught Between My Bully and My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: Christmas

The whole diner heard it.

The cook stood in the kitchen doorway with a spatula in his hand.

Corey looked at the phone on the counter.

My mother reached over and picked it up.

"Honey," she said. "We'll talk about it at home."

She hung up on him.

Then she finished her pie.

Christmas morning, it snowed.

My mother had a fire going and coffee on by six.

Corey had driven down alone the night before, the way his father wanted.

Crew was next door.

His porch light was on for the first time I could remember.

We opened presents in our pajamas in the living room with my stepfather in his recliner, saying nothing.

My mother gave Corey a shoebox.

He opened it.

Inside were nine envelopes, all addressed to him in her round handwriting.

None of them had ever been stamped.

"One every Christmas," she said. "I never sent a single one. I didn't have the nerve."

Corey took out the top envelope.

He read it right there on the rug, with his back against the couch.

He didn't say anything when he finished.

He put it back in the box very carefully, and put the lid on, and kept his hand on it.

My stepfather watched him from the recliner.

Then my mother stood up with a black trash bag and started stuffing wrapping paper into it.

Ribbon.

Tissue.

The box from my new boots.

She held the bag open and looked at her husband.

"Your rule's going in here too," she said. "I'm cooking for six. Somebody set the table."

"Dawn."

"It's Christmas," she said. "And it's our house."

She tied the bag shut.

Then she put on her boots and walked across the snow to the Kimble house in her robe.

I watched her from the window.

She knocked.

The door opened.

She talked for a long time.

Then she came back across the yard alone, with snow in her hair, and said, "One o'clock."

At one the doorbell rang.

Crew stood on the porch in a black sweater, his hair still wet from a shower.

Behind him stood his father.

I'd seen Crew's dad maybe twenty times in nine years.

Always through a window, always with a can.

He'd shaved.

He wore a blue button-down shirt that still had the creases from the package.

He was holding a store-bought pumpkin pie in both hands.

"Merry Christmas," he said to my mother. "Thank you for having us."

Crew stood beside him and didn't say anything at all.

He kept looking at his father's hands.

At dinner, my mother gave Crew's dad coffee.

He drank it all through the meal.

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