Chapter 8
I found her sitting on the third step of the staircase that afternoon. The hallway was quiet in a way it hadn't been before. That kind of quiet that happens after everyone has said something they can't take back and now nobody knows where to stand.
She had her knees pulled up to her chest. Brown ribbed shirt, same one from that morning. Her hair was still parted in the middle, but one side had come loose. She wasn't crying. She was picking at the edge of the patterned rug where it met the bottom step.
I stopped at the top of the hall. I didn't mean to eavesdrop. I just didn't know if I was allowed to walk past her anymore.
"You okay?" I asked.
She flinched. Her cheeks went red again, that flushed look she'd had when she said I was always looking at her. She didn't answer right away. She stared at the wood paneling like it could help her.
"I told her I didn't like sharing the hallway," she said finally. Her voice was small.
That was not what she'd said downstairs. I remembered the exact words because my dad had repeated them. My daughter doesn't feel comfortable with the way he looks at her. The way he looks.
I sat down on the step above her, leaving one stair between us. The wood creaked under me.
"Sharing the hallway?" I said.
She nodded and picked harder at the rug. "The bathroom is right by your room. I have to walk past to brush my teeth. I told Mom I felt weird. Like you were watching."
My chest tightened. "I wasn't."
"I know," she said quickly. She looked up at me then, eyes wide. "I told her I felt watched because the house is small. And your door is always open. I didn't say you did anything. She asked if you stared at me. I said sometimes you look."
Sometimes you look. In a cabin where the entire living space was hallway and living room and two bedrooms, of course I looked. We all looked at each other every time someone moved.
"Then what did she say?" I asked.
She swallowed. "She said that wasn't okay. That if a teenage boy looks at a little girl like that, it means something. She said I should tell her if you made me uncomfortable. I said okay. I didn't think she'd..."
She stopped and her mouth pressed into a thin line. Guilt came over her face all at once. The same guilt I'd seen that morning after she delivered the line. Yes, he does. He's always looking at me. She had said it like she was reading it, not feeling it. Her eyebrows had been furrowed, but her eyes had flicked to her mom right after, checking if she'd said it right.
From the living room, I heard my stepmother's voice. She was on the phone in the kitchen, low and controlled. I couldn't hear the words, just the cadence. That steady, sure tone she used when she was making a decision for both of them.
"Did you want her to say what she said downstairs?" I asked. "About the way I look at you?"
She shook her head hard. Tears finally came. Not loud, just water lining her eyes and spilling over.
"I told her I didn't like that you had friends over," she whispered. "Because it was loud. She turned it into something else. She kept asking, 'Does he make you feel unsafe?' And I didn't know what to say. I just wanted my own bathroom."
We sat there with the warm light coming through the hallway window. Dust floated in it. I could hear the clock in the living room and the faint hum of the television no one had turned off. The stone fireplace was cold behind the wall.
I didn't know what to do with what she'd just told me. It wasn't a full apology, and it wasn't a lie either. It was a kid who felt crowded in a new house and a mom who took that feeling and shaped it into a weapon that fit her purpose. The same purpose I'd figured out last night, staring at those photos on the mantel. She didn't just want safety. She wanted space. And the easiest way to get space was to make me the reason her daughter didn't have any.
"It's not your fault," I said. The words felt too big for my mouth, but I meant them.
She wiped her face with her sleeve. The gold hoops in her ears caught the light.
"Are you mad at me?" she asked.
I thought about it. I wasn't. I was mad in a different direction, one I couldn't fix from the third step.
"No," I said. "But you can't let her talk for you again. Not like that."
May you like
She nodded, but she looked scared again, eyes toward the kitchen where her mother was still talking. She had told the truth to me in the hallway, but I knew she wouldn't walk into that living room and say it out loud. Not yet. Not with her mom's hand on her shoulder.
We just sat there, two kids on the stairs, listening to the house hold its breath.
