Chapter 6 - Just Furniture Again
"So where's it going?" Dean asked.
Delaney thought about it, still looking at the glass. "Our apartment."
So that night we hauled the vanity into the back of Dean's SUV, drove it across town, and the four of us fought it up a narrow stairwell to the second floor.
Halfway through the doorway Delaney barked, "Dad, turn it before you take out the wall."
Dean stopped.
So did she.
She almost never called him that. Fifteen years of "Dean," and it just fell out of her sideways, in the middle of a sentence about drywall.
Neither one of them said a word about it. Dean just smiled, adjusted his grip, and rotated the vanity through the door.
Later, when Nolan and I were putting the last screws back into the mirror frame and Dean was carrying the blanket down to the car, I looked up.
Delaney was sitting at the vanity, taking out an earring. Nolan stood behind her at the bathroom sink with a toothbrush in his mouth, watching her in the reflection.
She caught him. "Stop staring at me, creep."
"I'm brushing my teeth," he said around the brush.
"Suspiciously."
He flicked a few drops of water at the back of her neck and she shrieked.
For one second I almost stepped back into that room. The old wiring. Watch her. Stand between her and the world. Check the picture before anybody else does.
May you like
Instead I found my coat, and I pulled the apartment door shut behind me on the way out.
And I let my daughter be the one to tell me, from now on, when she actually needed me in the room.
