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“What? Oh, sure. Did Will say why?”
Sophie shook her head. “Nope. Maybe he just wanted a fresh start.”
Her sister remained silent.
“Brynn, the water?” her mother said.
“Oh, right,” she muttered, returning to the task of washing her hands.
Marnie and Sophie exchanged a puzzled look. What was that all about? If anything, Brynn should be happy to get Will out of her life. It’s not like there was any love lost between those two. Sophie shrugged at her mom. She’d pester Brynn about it later. And from the wrinkles on Brynn’s normally perfectly smooth forehead, whatever was eating at her was going to be juicy.
Without Will’s easy, carefree presence to diffuse the usual Dalton stuffiness, the evening had a strained, stilted vibe. Marnie seemed to be still miffed with Sophie, although Sophie wasn’t sure it was for being tardy, the hole in her jeans, or the fact that she’d defended herself instead of apologizing.
Brynn continued to do the strange moody thing that really didn’t look good on her.
These were the types of evenings that the old Sophie would take charge of, sprinkling little bits of false cheer.
But not tonight. She didn’t have it in her. No matter how many times she told herself not to think about Gray (at least fourteen times every minute), she kept seeing the blank look in his silver eyes when she’d walked away from him.
She also kept seeing herself as she’d spent the weekend, wearing her baggiest pink sweats, eating nothing but corn chips and waiting for the phone to ring. It hadn’t.
The four of them shoveled food in robotic silence, until uncharacteristically, it was Sophie’s dad who finally tried to break the icy silence.
“Excellent roast, Marn,” he said as he sawed furiously at the dry piece of meat. Sophie rolled her eyes. The roast wasn’t even close to excellent. Sophie missed the days when her mother had worked full-time and they’d had a housekeeper who put perfectly passable casseroles in the oven. But since retirement had left Marnie feeling useless, she’d filled the void by buying a library’s worth of cookbooks.
Money would have been better spent on cooking lessons on how to actually use said cookbooks.
Sophie poked at an underseasoned potato and wished Brynn would bring one of her perfect boyfriends over more often. At least then Marnie tried to cook something other than a massive chunk of meat left to dry out in the oven for hours.
But Brynn hadn’t brought anyone over since that disastrous dinner with Gray.
Just look how that had turned out.
“Sophie, about your new job…” Chris said when Marnie failed to preen over his dinner praise. “I’ve been thinking, I bet a company like that would help pay to put you through business school. Then you could actually be one of the big guns instead of just working for them.”
As her father’s words penetrated her brain, Sophie let out a hysterical little laugh that had all three family members staring at her warily.
“I don’t think so, Dad.”
Chris looked disappointed, but not surprised. Marnie’s lips pressed into a thin line. Sophie waited patiently for a follow-up question she knew wouldn’t come.
So you like your job, then?
What about the other areas of your life?
How’s Gray? What’s going on there?
As expected, nobody spared her a second thought once they’d established she wasn’t angling to be CEO, and conversation turned to Brynn’s latest patient, who had an entire extra set of teeth.
Sophie quietly watched her family, feeling as though she was viewing them from a great distance.
There was her mother with her composed “interested” face as she listened to her successful older daughter discuss maxillary lateral incisors. And here was Sophie’s dad, nodding knowledgeably, even though Sophie was pretty sure he’d never had to get near a maxillary whatever during his days of sewing up appendices and ruptured spleens.
Last, Sophie studied Brynn, whose placid smile didn’t reach her eyes as she recited words Sophie didn’t know. None of the words were fewer than fifteen letters.
This can’t possibly be what Brynn wants out of her life, Sophie thought. It’s certainly not what I want.
Sophie’s fork clattered noisily to her plate, startling everyone into silence.
