At Home Late CH 25

He disappears down the hall.
After I hear him go down the stairs, I move to my window and look out at our
driveway. A minute later his SUV backs down onto the road and heads off.
Finally, I’m alone in the house. I’ve been waiting for this moment. Alex is at the
store and my mom is off for the weekend with her book club on a wine tasting
tour.
I go downstairs and grab a chair from the kitchen, carrying it down the hall to the
closed door to Alex’s home office. Placing the chair in front of the door, I stand
on it and reach up to the top of the frame, feeling for the key up there. After
grabbing it, I hop down and move the chair out of the way.
Alex makes his living as a writer, and instead of commuting to an office
somewhere like other dads, he stays at home and writes. What does he write? I
have no clue.
I’ve asked him many times, but he just brushes me off, telling me I wouldn’t be
interested in the things he writes. I’ve told him I’d be interested in anything he
writes, but he’s like a brick wall on the subject. Not only that, he keeps his office
locked at all times he’s not in there. And any time I do come in to visit while he’s
working, he quickly closes” screen so I can’t see anything. It’s so frustrating. When
I ask Mom about it, she just says it’s ‘technical instru
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Handle Stepfather And His Best Fiend
manuals‘ and I should stop worrying about it.
Then one day last week I’m vacuuming the carpet in the hall, and I accidentally
bang the vacuum cleaner against the base of the door to Alex’s office. As if by
magic, a key falls from the sky onto the carpet. Of course, I check to see if it fits
the lock, and the door opens. Bingo.
guess Alex figures with my five–feet–four height, I’d never discover the key at the
top of the frame. While his six–feet- two allows him to just reach up and grab it.
Since I’m not alone in the house at the time, I put the key back on the frame and
plan to use it when I had the chance.
And today is that chance.
I slide the key into the lock and turn, and the lock pops open. I enter my
stepdad’s forbidden sanctuary.
can feel my heartrate picking up. If Alex had forgotten anything and comes back,
I would be busted without any reasonable excuse to be in here. He’d probably
ground me for a month.
Artwork fills the walls and a couch sits along one side, but I ignore all of it and
walk straight to his large wooden desk. I move behind it and sit it in the high–
backed leather chair before opening his laptop. It starts right up, showing the
login screen, including the request for a password.
Damn, I hadn’t considered this possibility.
Five minutes later I’m still trying to guess the password, typing in birthdays and
pet names Alex had mentioned. Running out of ideas, I type in ‘Ashley0224‘
which is my name and birthday.
To my complete surprise, the desktop appears.
“Holy shit,” I mutter. Really? Alex is using my name as his password? That seems a
little weird. My password is so much better since it’s ‘LICKmyCLIT69. No one’s
going to guess that one.
I start searching through Alex’s hard drive, and find a directory called Writing‘.
Underneath that are various directories including, ‘Covers, ‘Published, and
‘Working.” I click on the “Published directory and under that are directories for
each month going back several years. I open the directory for the latest month.
What I see there confuses me. Each directory is a bunch of words
crammedtogether,like StrandedWithMyStepdad’or “DisciplinedByMyStepdad”
What the fuck? What does all that mean?
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