“He works at the restaurant sometimes.”
He continued to frown and he had more questions. “You said that you live with your family, but do all y’all live at home? You, your brother, and your sister?”
“Yes, we’re all still there. I know that probably seems weird and stunted to you.” It must have. It seemed weird to me and it was my own life. “We don’t get paid much so that makes it hard to move out.”
“What?” He leaned back in his chair and stared. “What do you mean? You must get at least the minimum wage.”
“No, and we don’t keep track of hours. It’s afamilybusiness.” Damn, I sounded just like my mom. “We’re there helping out because we’re family.”
“But you just said that your brother only works ‘sometimes’ and before, you told me that your sister isn’t around much, either. That leaves you and you don’t get paid. Good golly. Some people would call that wage theft.”
“I’m choosing to do it,” I argued back. “If I didn’t, the restaurant would probably fail. No, it would definitely fail. It’s too much for just my parents and it mostly falls on my mom, anyway. I think she’d crumble. It’s afamilybusiness,” I said again.
“And it’s doing so poorly that they can’t afford to pay you what you deserve?” He sounded very skeptical.
“Most restaurants don’t make much money. We’re out in the boondocks doing the best we can.”
“It doesn’t seem fair, though. You work hard.”
“I don’t pay rent and I hardly ever buy groceries,” I offered. “When my mom needs to borrow my credit card, she pays me back.”
“But your siblings probably get those same advantages,” Shane said. “And you’re the only one putting in the hours.”
“It’s how we do things,” I said shortly.
He was momentarily distracted by the arrival of his appetizer. When he started to question me again, I avoided it by asking him a different one.
“What about your career path? It’s not what you thought you would do, but are you happy with it? Is your family?”
He only answered the last part. “They’re not thrilled,” he said. “My dad would be glad if I came home and worked in his insurance office, and I can do that if…you know, if this doesn’t work out.” He sipped from his glass of water with a little twist of organic lemon. “My mom would like me to live closer, no matter what I’m doing. She wants to be able to help out.”
“With what?”
“Everything.” He smiled. “She has plans for us and so far, only my oldest sister Nora is toeing the line. She has a solid career, retirement savings, a good marriage, and two kids. The rest of us have been flying below the radar but our mom could crack down at any time to enforce more adulthood on us.”
“Does she use a wooden spoon?” I guessed.
“Her weapon is guilt. None of us want to make her unhappy.”
I thought about what his parents might have expected for him and how those dreams could have included a professional football career, one in which he made enough money to set himself up for life. It was really too bad that it hadn’t worked out. My parents were very sorry about Max’s lack of success, particularly my dad. He had really believed that his son would be somebody important, somebody rich.
But maybe he had bet on the wrong kid. Maybe I was the one who could turn all our fortunes around…
“Molly?”
“Let’s look at some of the rental listings I saved. We can go see them after we finish dinner,” I said.
We did do that after we left the restaurant. “This whole area will get more crowded as the tourist season approaches,” I warned after he shook his head at yet another building. “It would be better to sign a lease now.”
“A year lease. I’ll probably be here for that long,” he considered. It sounded like he wasn’t totally sure, though.
“Is moving a possibility? Are you going to get traded—no, not traded. Would you get hired away?”
“My goal is to stay and get promoted within the Woodsmen organization but football employment is fluid, both for the players and for the coaching staff. And for the scouts,” he added. “I may end up going elsewhere.”
“Wow.” I thought about that for a moment. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
“You wouldn’t want to?”
