Taken While I Slept by My Stepbrother and His Friends novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The First Pool

He stayed in that chair for another ten minutes while I lay frozen in the dark.

Then the chair rolled back to my desk, the door clicked, and the key turned.

His slippers went away down the hall.

I didn't move until the office door shut.

Then I reached under my pillow.

Forty-one minutes of recording.

I sent it to Torin, to Gage and to my own email, and texted all four of them.

I've got him. Don't come in. I'm fine.

Zane answered first, from the truck down the street.

I'm here till he leaves. I'm not going anywhere.

At breakfast Dwight wore a golf shirt and the blue tie folded in his pocket.

"Two nights downtown at the resort," he said, kissing my mother's cheek. "Forum prep with the team."

"Back Friday with the car for both my girls."

He kissed the top of my head.

I let him.

His car turned out of the driveway at eight.

My mother went back to bed at nine.

At nine fifteen I was in the garage with the door down, pulling a tarp off my father's old gray file cabinet.

It had sat behind Dwight's golf bag for six years.

Nobody had opened it.

The bottom drawer said HOUSE in my dad's blocky print.

Behind the pool permits and the warranty for the water heater was a white envelope with a county seal on it.

OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER.

My mom had never opened it.

I could tell because the flap was still glued.

I sat on the cool concrete and read it the way I'd been trained to read a chart.

Cause of death, drowning.

Manner, accident.

Toxicology, a sedative at a level that would put a big man to sleep in twenty minutes.

I knew the name.

It was typed across the top of the orange bottle in Dwight's golf bag, above my mother's name.

No prescription for the decedent was located, it said. Spouse states the decedent may have used her medication.

My dad never took a pill in his life.

He wouldn't even take Advil for his back.

By ten all four of them were in my kitchen.

I put the report on the counter and played the last two minutes of the recording.

Your father fell asleep in that pool too.

Kipp turned around and walked out onto the deck and stood there with his hands on his head.

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