My Sister Stole My Second Life novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Guest Room

I stood in the kitchen doorway with my backpack still on.

Dena looked up at me over the frozen peas.

The bruise was real.

I'd worn that exact bruise once, from the same hand, the night I came home with a B.

"Okay," I said.

Anne nodded in relief.

"Thank you."

"It's your house," I said. "It was never mine to say."

I went upstairs.

Dena caught me on the landing ten minutes later, still in Anne's sweater.

"Don't look at me like that," she whispered. "I didn't plan this."

"You posted the video."

"Dad did. He took my phone. That's what I told her."

"At four in the morning? Lyle's asleep on the couch by eleven with the TV on. Every night."

She didn't blink.

"Prove it."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"Touch anything of mine," I said. "My room. My closet. My list. And I'll find a way."

"Your list." She smiled with half her face. "God, you were always so boring."

She went into the guest room and shut the door very softly.

Dena settled into the Stanhope house.

By the end of the first week, she knew where the good coffee was.

By the end of the second, she had Mr. Stanhope laughing.

He didn't laugh at anything. I'd lived with him four months and never heard it.

But Dena sat at his elbow at dinner and asked about bond markets with her big gray eyes, and when he made one of his dry little jokes, she laughed before anybody else got it.

He started explaining things to her with a pen on his napkin.

On the third Sunday, I came down to dinner and she was in my chair.

The one at Anne's left.

"Oh," she said brightly. "Did you want this one? I didn't think it mattered."

Anne looked at me.

I took the empty chair at the far end, next to Thatcher.

He was the only one at the table who didn't laugh at Dena's stories.

He was polite to her.

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