Chapter 8: The Office Couch

Kevin’s office doubled as a library and, on nights like this, a guest room. The sofa had always been the sofa. It also pulled out, which everyone in the house treated as a theoretical feature more than an actual bed. I had slept on it as a sofa more times than I could count: movie nights that ran late, storms, the ordinary fact of not wanting to go home yet. Sue and Carrie started for the hall closet and the sheets that turned the furniture into a bed.

“It is fine,” I said. “I have slept on this sofa a hundred times. It is more comfortable as a sofa than as a pullout.”

They both laughed, the laugh of people who had met the metal bar that lived in the middle of that pullout and had formed clear opinions on it. Sue agreed. Carrie agreed. They got me blankets and a pillow that smelled like this house, which was a smell I could have identified in the dark. Sue hugged me. She kissed the side of my head the way she had been doing since I was ten and said it would be okay, not as a prediction she could guarantee, just as a sentence she was willing to stand next to until I could hear it.

Carrie left and came back with a glass of water. She set it on the side table and sat on the edge of the sofa, close enough that the teasing had to share space with the concern.