Chapter 5: Long Way Home

Mona's POV

I got behind the ice sacks with my pins in my fist and my dress buttoned wrong.

Lucius zipped his jeans, kicked his coat under the shelf, and drew the bolt back in a flurry of movement.

"Somebody bolted my door," Odette said.

My aunt came in out of the dark in her ice house sweatshirt with her glasses pushed up in her silver braid.

I could see her through a gap between two sacks.

"Draft," Lucius said. "The latch sticks."

"The latch never sticks. I put the grease on it myself."

She looked around the cold room.

She looked at the key sitting on the block of ice, the one from her nail in the office.

She looked at him for a good while.

"I came for two bags," she said. "My ankle."

"I'll bring them."

"I can lift two bags."

"Sit down, Odette," he said.

She sat on an upturned crate, which she never does, and put her foot up, and I held my breath so long my ears rang.

She said, "Marchetti's father called. They want to talk about the fall contract."

"It can wait."

"That's what I said." She was looking at the floor now, at the hairpins scattered on the concrete.

She said nothing about them.

Then she stood, took her ice, and walked out without another word, and left the key on the block.

I came out from behind the sacks, hot to the ears.

"She knows," I whispered.

"She doesn't."

"Lucius, there are hairpins on the floor."

"Odette has seen a hairpin," he said.

"She looked at them for a full minute."

He did not smile, but I saw him want to.

The next morning I found her on the ice house step with her one cigarette of the day.

She smoked it slowly, because it was all she allowed herself.

I sat down beside her with my coffee.

"Tante," I said. "Can I ask you something about Papa?"

"You can ask."

"The night he died. I went to a party."

I felt her stop breathing.

It was a small thing, a pause in the smoke.

I would not have heard it if I hadn't spent six years listening to people for a living.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Dad's Best Friend Said No Daddy Jokes, So I Made Him Say Yes from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.