Chapter 8: Terms

On Tuesday night Sam stood on my stepladder with a screwdriver in his teeth, taking the garage keypad off the wall.

"You could hold the flashlight," he said around the screwdriver.

"I'm holding the flashlight."

"You're holding it at my feet."

I raised it.

The light fell on a bundle of thin wires, a green circuit board and the back of his hand.

He took the screwdriver out of his mouth and set it on the ladder shelf.

"The code is still the one on the old sheet," he said. "Anyone who ever saw it can punch it in."

"Only Carlton, my sister and I ever knew it."

"And now Colleen."

"Carlton must have told her."

"Maybe."

He said it neutrally and bent back to the wires.

For a while there was only the sound of the screwdriver.

I had told Carlton at dinner that I'd change the code, and he had said, "Whatever makes you feel safe," without looking up from his phone.

Colleen had said nothing at all.

She had eaten her salad and gone upstairs.

"Higher," Sam said.

I raised the flashlight another inch.

"Left."

"Your left or mine?"

"Yours." He held out one hand, flat, palm up. "Give it here a second."

He closed his hand around mine and turned my wrist, lifting the beam to the angle he wanted.

His fingers were warm and rough from work and they stayed on my wrist a second longer than the flashlight needed.

Neither of us said so.

I looked at the circuit board very hard.

"That's better," he said at last.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Gave My House to His Ex, So I Took My Life Back from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.