Chapter 5: Three Rules

Clifford's housekeeper set three plates on the kitchen table and gave Meredith a look that said she was not taking sides.

I had moved a duffel bag into the carriage house an hour before. It held everything I owned that mattered.

Meredith sat across from me with her arms crossed.

"I have rules," she said.

"I figured."

"Rule one. No lies. If you're going to be in this house, I'm going to hear what's true, even if it's ugly."

"Fine."

"Rule two. No touching."

I raised my eyebrows. "Mer, I was married to you."

"Rule two," she said again, and her ears went pink.

"Fine."

"Rule three. At Grandpa's table, we're civil. He's sick of the shouting in this family."

Clifford lifted his fork. "I'm sick of a great many things. Pot roast isn't one of them."

The housekeeper snorted from the stove.

"I'll shake on it," I said.

Meredith looked at my hand across the table.

"Rule two," she said.

I put my hand back in my lap, and Clifford coughed into his napkin in a way that sounded like a laugh.

For about ten minutes it was almost an ordinary dinner.

Meredith told a story about a driver who had backed a rig into a mailbox shaped like a fish.

I laughed before I could stop myself.

She almost smiled, and then she remembered, and the smile went away.

It was the first time I'd heard her talk about her job in a year.

That was when the front door banged open.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My In-Laws Mocked the Tow Driver, Until They Learned I Was Kijin from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.