“I’m aware, thanks.”
“I can’t provide him with love and support from his family and I think it’s petty that you guys have cut him off, just because he found happiness for himself.” She had been leaning forward, very impassioned, but I didn’t jump in at her emotional level. After a moment of silence from me, she sat back and the color slowly faded from her cheeks. “Well? Don’t you have a response?”
“Thanks for sharing and thanks for the croissant.” I managed not to roll my eyes and snarl, like when I’d been thirteen and had quoted emotional song lyrics a lot, thinking they expressed my inner turmoil better than I ever could. But I did stand up to leave and Avonlea’s eyes widened.
“Don’t you want to defend yourself?”
“Ok, sure. What you just said is a crock of bull,” I stated. “You don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re coming across as condescending and ignorant. Oh, ‘condescending’ means bitchy and ‘ignorant’ means dumb.”
Her eyes got a little bigger. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then tried again. “I didn’t mean to be that way. I’m sorry if what I said sounded insulting.”
“It didn’t justsoundinsulting, it actually was,” I let her know, but I did sit because I was still curious. “What did my brother tell you about our situation?”
Avonlea explained her side, which was Max’s side: Dad had dipped out, my brother had tried to help, we’d blown him off, he’d run away to her mansion to find a sympathetic shoulder tocry on, and no one had talked to him since. Those weren’t exactly her words but I condensed and interpreted.
“None of us talked to him?” I asked. I thought back over the last few weeks, the tangle of time since my dad had left. He still hadn’t returned, by the way, and he hadn’t been in contact. But he had accumulated several notices from the City of Las Vegas about outstanding tickets, notices mailed to his former address. I knew that because my mom had texted me to ask if she should pay them. She and Morgan were still living at our formerfamilyhome because it hadn’t flown off the market as sold, as their real estate agent had claimed that it would.
“No one has ever contacted him,” she answered me. “He keeps searching for your dad’s name online to make sure he hasn’t died but everyone just forgot to mention it so Max would miss the funeral.” She was back to looking angry.
“I think everyone has been busy,” I said. “I graduated and moved out. My mom and Morgan are apparently trying to start a new life.” Another thing that my mom had texted about was the saga of the two of them looking for jobs, and how hard it was to find something. At least Morgan had managed to graduate from high school, but she had zero experience on her résumé besides whatever they pretended that she’d done at our formerfamilyrestaurant.
No, she really had worked there. Some. I could give her a little more credit, and I could also give Max a little credit for caring. “I’m sorry that it seemed like we dropped him. I honestly believed that he wasn’t very interested in our problems,” I said.
“He cares a lot,” his girlfriend informed me. “A hell of a lot. That was why he wanted to take over the restaurant.”
I stared at her. “What?” And she explained as I sat with my jaw slack with surprise.
“I didn’t even remember him saying it, but Avonlea swears that my brother told us that he would be the cook,” I wrote to Shane. “There’s no way! Max has this thing about having sensitive cuticles so he always struggled to trim his nails. He would have a freaking fit if he had to deal with pounds and pounds of raw meat!”
I thought more and then also wrote more. “I don’t remember him suggesting that but I do know how I would have reacted if he had. I would have ignored him or said no, that won’t work, because I really don’t think it would have. He had a lot of chances to show up for us before but he never did. We didn’t need someone else letting us down at that moment.”
It was basically the same thing I’d explained to Avonlea before I’d left the coffee shop. “I’m sorry that I hurt his feelings,” I’d told her. “Everything was in an uproar and I don’t even remember talking about that. But Max has always had a lot of chances to step up—he never did. I probably thought that he’d let us down again.”
And she had told me that he wouldn’t let anyone down, that I had a bad attitude, and that I didn’t deserve any help. It was all probably true.
I waited to hear back from Shane but didn’t, not right away. He was scouting down in the Detroit area right now, and I figuredthat he was probably busy watching guys or talking to coaches. I worked on filling out more applications for jobs, positions all over the country, and then I went to do my shift at the one that I already had. I didn’t really enjoy waitressing but it was a relief to be in a restaurant where I didn’t have to worry about everything all the time. I did my job and no one else’s, and I didn’t think about problems in the kitchen, with inventory, with the roof falling, or other disasters. It was easy enough but not what I was looking for long-term, so when I returned to Shane’s duplex, I went for a run and worked on more applications.
After a while, it got late and I realized that I still hadn’t received an answer from him. He was busy and it sometimes took him a while, but he always got back to me. I wrote again.
“Everything ok?”
This time he did respond: “Having an off day.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
He did, because he called. “Hi,” he said, and I could hear it in his voice. Whatever had happened, it was bad.
“Hi,” I answered. “What’s going on? Is it something about the Woodsmen?”
“No, I had an appointment with an eye doctor down here. A specialist.”
“Oh.” I paused, giving him a chance to explain, but he didn’t. “Did you get tough news?”
He had. The tests they’d done showed that his peripheral vision had decreased again, faster than anyone had expected.“It shouldn’t have narrowed so quickly,” he told me. “I’ve been doing everything right, with diet and protecting my eyes. Why did this happen?”
“Did the doctor have any idea?”
“No. She said that it progresses differently for everyone, even people within the same family. There’s nothing that anyone can do.”
