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How fake everything felt. Because if she wasn’t sure their love was real and worthy of her trust, how could he be sure about anything?
Gratitude went around the table in a wave, with mostly predictable answers. The kids had trouble saying more than that they were happy to be back in Missoula to see their friends. They were obviously struggling with the mid-school-year move.
Brook was last. “I think most of what I’m grateful for this year I said in the blessing. Health is probably the biggest thing. I hadn’t realized how important it was until this year. And like the kids, I’m glad to be back in Missoula, among people I love.”
Levi still wasn’t sure if the references to health were pointed at Dennis or Mina, but he could see the wound the remark about being among friends left on Dennis’s neck.
Thanksgiving was going to be a long dinner. It would be easier if Mina’s hand were still on his knee.
“Did you just move?” Peg asked, all innocence. All she’d been told was that his sister was coming in from Bozeman for dinner. No one had purposefully thrown her to the wolves.
“Oh, not even a month ago. Dennis got a new job.” Brook was smiling, and her voice was light as she said the words, spooning green-bean casserole onto her plate. But the corner of her mouth was stretched just a bit too wide and her lips a bit too thin.
Levi knew his sister. And none of that was a good sign. He’d had a dog who made the same face thirty seconds before barfing up his dinner.
“How nice for you,” Peg said, looking between Brook and Dennis and their kids. “A promotion, I assume?”
“Yes...”
Dennis coughed, and Brook didn’t let him recover long enough to finish. “It’d better be a promotion for how much extra he’s working.”
Given Peg’s startled blinks, she had just realized the minefield that she’d stepped into. “Oh, yes,” she said, her voice trying to smooth over the bumps that had appeared in dinner. “New jobs do that to you, right, Mina?”
“Oh!” Mina followed her mom’s bright tone, even as she looked back and forth between Dennis and Brook, her gaze stopping on their kids and the dedicated way they ate their food without looking up. “Moving is hard, and it takes a long time to build a group of friends. But it’s good. Especially today with email and Facebook and texting. You get to keep your old friends, too.”
Solstice, Levi’s niece, looked up at that remark, and he wondered if all Brook’s negative energy had made her forget that she needed to help her kids learn to be happy in their new hometown. “If you kids want to visit friends, you can always stay with me. Or I could meet your mom halfway and drive you,” he offered.
“You managed to make friends fast,” Brook said, turning to Mina. “Got any secrets you want to share?”
Mina raised her eyebrow as she took a bite of turkey. Like everything else Brook had said over dinner, the words themselves weren’t bad, but the tone and implication were caustic enough to strip paint off a rusted metal chair. “I decided I was going to have high expectations of Missoula and that it would live up to them.”
Then she glanced over at Levi, and the tension in her jaw softened. He could see that she had faith in them and their relationship. Why couldn’t she see it and just say it? Saying “Missoula and the people in it have exceeded my expectations. I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else” wasn’t the same.
“You have someone to call if you get sick.” Brook’s voice bordered on the wistful, and, for once tonight, Levi almost felt sorry for her. Almost, because she was coming awfully close to talking about Mina’s HIV, and she wasn’t able to do that without being horrible. Tonight didn’t seem like the night she would change her ways.
“Yes, being able to call someone when you’re sick is important. I heard Dennis cough, but I thought that was just a little cold,” Peg said, still wading her way through the nasty family business being slopped onto the table. “Or do you have a health problem I don’t know about?”
“Dennis...” his sister started to say.
Dennis interrupted her. “Levi and I were in the same mine accident together. I have lung damage from it. It’s not cancer. Despite what some people believe.”
