Chapter Three
The first time I cheat is by accident.
Most nights Daddy plays at The Cellar, a bar underneath an old hotel, the wooden wine racks still standing. In the back corner there’s a table covered with fraying green fabric, its surface marked with burns and sticky blackness from a lifetime of games. The chairs around the table don’t match—some of them stained cloth, others brown leather with stuffing poked out.
The chair I like best is cream-colored with drawings in blue—a boy chasing a puppy, a pie on a picnic table. It’s like someone’s happy childhood, wholesome and innocent.
On that particular night we get there early enough that the chair I want is empty. I tuck my feet underneath me and read a book, pressing my face into the pages, blocking out the voices and the smoke.
I’
