My Father's Best Friend Fixed My Roof, Then Never Left My Kitchen novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Lights On

Milan's POV

She had lived in Frank's house for two weeks, and she had not yet sat down.

The truck stood in the driveway with its tailgate open and the last of her boxes on the porch.

Two of the Thursday stools had helped carry the bed in.

I had fed them coffee and sent them home with a loaf of her mother's rye from the freezer.

Now it was ten o'clock on a Sunday night in the second half of November, and the whole house was lit.

She had turned on every lamp, as she did.

I came in from locking the truck and stood in the hall with my cap in my hand.

The front bedroom door was open.

It had been Frank's sewing room once, the room Carly's mother had kept, with a treadle machine under the window.

Carly had cleared it out the week before and painted it a pale warm yellow.

The new bed sat against the far wall with a quilt I recognized from my own mother's cedar chest.

She stood in the middle of the floor in her old gray T-shirt, barefoot, with her braid undone over one shoulder.

"You said it was a spare room," I said.

"It was."

"It's a bedroom."

"It's mine." She looked around it. "I didn't want my old room. I didn't want his room either."

"No."

"So I made one."

She held out her hand.

I crossed the floor and took it.

Her palm was warm, and a little rough from the boxes, and I stood there holding her hand.

"Close the door," Carly said.

I closed it.

"Leave the light on."

"The overhead?"

"All of it. The lamp, too. I want to see you," she said.

I looked at her.

I had been the one giving the orders for five weeks.

I had found out that I was good at it, and that she liked it, and that it was easy.

I looked at her face, serious in the lamplight, and found that I wasn't sure what to say.

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