My Stepfather and His Friends novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Room Upstairs
I gave him two days.
On Sunday night I climbed the stairs late and stopped at the door at the end of the hall.
In fourteen months I had never seen the inside of Warren's bedroom.
He kept the door shut, and no one went in, not the cleaner, not Owen, not me.
I knocked once.
"It's open," he said.
He was standing at the foot of the bed in his undershirt and jeans.
The room was plain.
A big bed with a grey quilt, a dresser, a window that looked over the pool and my mother's garden.
On the left nightstand there was a reading lamp and a paperback with a cracked spine.
On the right, nothing at all.
"That was her side," I said.
"I don't sleep on it."
I closed the door behind me and turned the lock.
His eyes followed my hand.
"I picked the day," I said. "It's today."
"I know."
"Tell me what you want, Warren."
He swallowed.
"I want you to be sure."
"That's not what you want. That's what you're afraid of."
A long breath went out of him.
"I want to put you on that bed and not let you up until morning," he said, and his voice dropped on the last word. "I've wanted it since your mother's wedding."
I walked toward him.
"I watched you cross a lawn in a green dress," he said. "You were twenty-one. You laughed at something Caleb said, and I thought, God help me, look at her."
"And you married my mother anyway."
"I loved your mother." He met my eyes. "I loved her for five years, and I never touched you, and I never let myself think about it twice. It was a thing I kept in the shed, like a tool I wasn't going to use."
"And after she died?"
"After she died it was worse. It was worse every day."
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