Sharing the Stepsister

Prologue

I wanted Tessa the night I met her.

Not the polite version. Not the she’s going to be family version my father kept repeating in the car on the way to dinner.

She was nineteen, in a black dress that didn’t belong at a steakhouse in October, and she shook my hand like she already knew I was going to be a problem.

I was twenty-five. Bennett was twenty-three.

Reid had just turned twenty-one and was still talking too loud.

Four years. It’s been four years.

We never lived in this house together full-time.

Summers. Holidays. Long weekends when her mom wanted “the kids” under one roof like that word still applied.

I took the room across the hall from hers and learned the sound of her door, the way the floorboards sold you out if you stood there too long.

I learned how to want her and do nothing about it.

Bennett learned how to watch me want her.

Reid learned how to make a joke so none of us had to say it.

Dad and her mom have been gone since Thursday.

Anniversary. Ten days. They left a list: don’t let the pipes freeze, don’t leave the attic hatch open, don’t scare Tessa about the second floor.

The second floor is why we used to say the place was haunted.

It isn’t. It’s old wood and a furnace that kicks like a body hitting the wall.

It still sounds like someone walking when no one is.

Tonight she said she wanted a movie. Something stupid and loud. Lights off, because if we were going to sit in this house after dark we might as well commit to it.

I should have picked a different couch.