I Sat on My Stepfather's Lap All Match, and Mom Was Filming novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Gabriel's POV: The Shelf

Gabriel's POV

I took the bundle out of Lainey's hand before she could answer.

"That's mine," I said. "I've been looking for it for a week."

Rosalyn's eyes stayed on the cloth.

"What is it?"

"A knife for the shelf. Lainey found it behind the chairs."

I tucked it under my arm, and I kept my face still.

Her eyes moved to her son.

He was staring at the floor with every muscle held still.

"Everyone hungry?" she said at last. "Let's eat."

She turned and went back to the kitchen, and nobody breathed until her heels had gone down the hall.

I put the box cutter in a freezer bag that night and hid it in the one place in the house she would never open, the box of my old boots under the stairs.

Saturday came up bright and hot.

Rosalyn was a general with a clipboard.

She had a caterer at nine, a florist at ten and a rental company dragging fifty folding chairs across the lawn.

She kissed me on the forehead each time she passed.

I had not known a person could be that warm and that rotten at once.

At two, a car pulled into the drive, and Dale got out of the passenger side with a woman in a gray suit and a leather briefcase.

"Gabriel," Rosalyn called. "Study, please. Five minutes."

I went in.

The woman in the suit sat at my desk and unpacked a stamp and a ledger.

She said she was the notary, and she did not make eye contact.

Dale stood by the window with his hands in his pockets.

Rosalyn sat on the edge of the sofa and crossed her ankles.

"We thought," she said, "that it would be tidier to sign today."

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