My Stepfather Sold Me at the Card Table, and the Man Who Won Me Never Looked My Way novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: Kiddo
I opened the door, because I wanted to see his face.
I stood in the frame with my coffee in my hand and did not ask him in.
Bram stood on my mother's porch in the blue dusk, with a white paper bag in one hand and his thermos in the other.
His cheeks were pink from the cold and his curls were damp with snow.
He looked like every uncle in every photograph.
"Cheese ones," he said, holding up the bag. "I remembered."
"I don't want a pastry, Bram."
"Then I'll eat it myself."
He sat down on the top step as if he had been invited and unscrewed the thermos.
He poured a cup of coffee and held it out to me over his shoulder.
I was holding a cup of my own.
I did not take his.
"Suit yourself." He set it down on the boards beside him. "I'll say it plain, because you're a girl who likes things plain."
He looked out over the white gully and the roofs.
"The ring's dead. It's been dead eight years, kiddo."
He turned the thermos lid in his fingers.
"I was a young man who made a bad choice with the wrong people."
He did not look at me.
"It killed a woman I was fond of. I think about her every March."
His voice thickened on the last word.
I watched his face.
It was real.
That was what made me want to be sick.
He was sorry, and he would be just as sorry tomorrow, and he would never once stop to ask whether sorry bought a single thing.
"You were at her funeral lunch," I said.
"I carried the casserole."
"You poured my coffee."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Stepfather Sold Me at the Card Table, and the Man Who Won Me Never Looked My Way are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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