“As weird as that sounds, I get it,” I said. “I’m sure my mom would have stayed here and participated in geographical inbreeding if she hadn’t met my dad, who whisked her away out west.”
“What made your parents want to move back?”
I imperceptibly flinched, despite knowing how likely that follow-up question was. While it wasn’t necessarily upsetting for me to share information about my parents, and especially my dad, it always sucked telling someone for the first time, and probably always would. But he’d been truthful with me all day, so I owed him the same.
“Honestly, my mom would have moved back sooner. I can see why she likes it here,” I replied with surprising steadiness. “But my dad died in a car accident when I was eight. My mom chose the stability of her private school art teacher job while she was a single parent, but now that my sister and I are adults, she felt she could take a more art-focused opportunity out here and actually get back to what she’s good at.”
“Oh shit,” Brooklyn said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” I waved him off. “It’s been so long now that it being only me, my sister, and my mom feels so normal.”
Brooklyn’s features softened. “Your mom sounds like a good person.”
“She’s all right,” I said playfully. “She did give me kind of a hard time last week about ‘not wasting my summer.’ She gave me a spiel about going out and having a good time, getting into trouble—but ‘not too much trouble’—and whatever else not wasting a summer entails.”
Not that my mother put any pressure on me (most of that came from myself), but she didn’t want me to shoulder the burden of everything all by myself. I could put it down sometimes. It was just hard to remember that when it mattered.
“Yeah, I got read that riot act at home too.” He nodded. “Maybe not in those exact words, but same sentiment. Guess we’re in it together.”
My face flushed. “I guess we are.”
We pulled into a gravel driveway down a dead-end street shaded by tall, thick palm trees. Peaks of a house poked above the trees that were planted against the edge of the front lawn. Cars lined one side of the driveway leading up to a two-car garage attached to a perfectly picturesque house, as blue as the sky on a clear day. Trees and shrubs ornately dotted the side of the house, and a porch with white columns wrapped around the entire first floor.
“Is your mom having a party or something?” I asked, trying to count how many cars were parked. At least six.
“She hosts book club on Saturdays,” Brooklyn replied, heaving out a tired sigh. “Really it’s just an excuse for all the neighborhood moms to get together and gossip about stupid shit.”
The subtext was loud. Whatever “stupid shit” they gossiped about involved him—at least partially.
He maneuvered his car in front of one of the two garage doors and killed the engine. He reached over for my hand like he had before, his touch soft and reassuring.
“Thanks for this, Nat,” he said. “Seriously.”
“Of course,” I replied with a faint smile, pulling my hand away when I realized how clammy my palms were. When and how didthathappen? There was nothing to be nervous about, but my body seemed to think otherwise.
He hopped out of the car and beckoned me to follow him to the front door. Light flooded the foyer as we entered, sending streaks of afternoon sun across the wooden floors. I wasn’t sure why I expected a house that looked like it was staged forHomes & Gardens, but instead, it looked incredibly lived in. There were shoes by the front door, along with purses and hats hanging from a coatrack topped with bronze sea creatures. As we walked past the stairs immediately to the right, I spotted several white bags from a store called Sandy Lane Boutique precariously perched on one of the steps.
As Brooklyn led me to the kitchen, we walked past a baby-blue credenza crowded with about a dozen framed photographs of Brooklyn and his family frozen in various stages of life. It was easy to single out some of the bigger pictures at the back, where what looked like a few of Brooklyn’s high-school photos sat in shiny silver frames. He sported a wide, white-toothed grin like the one he’d been wearing all day.
“You can sit down if you want.” Brooklyn gestured to one of the navy leather bar stools at the island when we made it into the kitchen. I perched myself at the edge of the stool and watched with more fascination than I’d admit as Brooklyn paced around the kitchen, yanking open random cabinets. He then walked over to the refrigerator on the other side of the island. It had a large black screen on the right-side door, and when he tapped it twice, its contents were illuminated.
“Wow.” I gawked. “That’s an impressive fridge.”
“You want anything?”
I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks.”
“It’s a smart fridge,” Brooklyn explained as he yanked the door open. “It’s supposed to be some energy-saving thing. It’s got a calendar, grocery lists, and a whole bunch of other unnecessary shit.” He pulled a big bottle of SunnyD out and slammed the door closed with his elbow. “It’s kind of ridiculous, but my dad is really into this stuff.”
“Is he participating in book club too?” I asked as I pulled at the hair tie around my wrist.
“Nah. Right now he’s somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico,” Brooklyn replied. I must have made a puzzled face. “He’s a drilling consultant on an offshore oil rig.”
“That makes sense now. Is he gone long?”
“It depends.” Brooklyn shrugged, then took a swig of SunnyD straight from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He usually does a month on and a month off, but he left about a week ago for a two-month tour, so he’ll be gone mostly all summer.”
For a fleeting moment there was a crack in Brooklyn’s voice, and then it was gone as quickly as it came. But I couldn’t miss it if I tried; I recognized the sound of missing my dad.
