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“Gee, thanks,” I said. “Real helpful.”
He glanced around, as if taking in the surroundings for the first time. “Is this your childhood room?” he asked. “There’s a lot of black.”
“Well, I didn’t paint it that way until I was fourteen and capable of making cryptic comments about how I wanted my room to match my soul. When this was truly mychildhoodbedroom, it was perfectly normal, thank you very much. I had a wallpaper border with roses on it and an American Girl doll on the dresser and everything.”
“Let me guess.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Samantha.”
“Not all brunette girls needed to own a Samantha doll,” I said, affronted. “But yes, it was Samantha. She had a really cool tartan cape and a valise and she stood up against child labor, so don’t think she was just some prissy rich girl.”
Sam held his hands up in surrender. “I would never.”
“How do you have a handle on the Pleasant Company catalog, anyway? Not that dudes can’t play with dolls, et cetera, but you saidSamanthawith the air of a man who knew about Molly and Felicity and Addy and Kirsten and Josefina and Kit...”
“You lost me at Kit,” he said. “But I have sisters. I know stuff.”
I remembered the pictures hanging in his house, the masses of people, all smiling as though they were actually happy to spend time together. “How many siblings do you have?”
“Five,” he said, and that number shocked me even though I’d been preparing myself for it to be high.
“You come from a family ofsixkids?” I asked.
He started counting off on his fingers. “Tara is the oldest, then Jack, Megan, me, Erin, and Dylan.”
“Are you all close?”
He shrugged. “Pretty close, I think,” he said. “Obviously we’re kind of spread out now. We grew up in Chicago, and Tara and Megan stayed near there, and Dylan still lives at home. Jack is stationed overseas, and Erin is in grad school in Seattle. We have a group chat, though.”
I knew it.
“You and Conner must be close,” Sam said. “What did he end up needing the other night?”
I waved my hand. “It’s a long story,” I said, not wanting to get into the proposal scheme and the broken wrist and all that. “Conner and I actually don’t know each other that well. There’s a seven-year age gap, and since I moved out with our mom when he was only six and he stayed here with our dad, we didn’t grow up in the same house for most of our childhood.”
“Oh.” Sam had brought his knees up, linking his arms loosely around them, and he seemed to be thinking about what I’d said. We were the living embodiment of a Tolstoy quote—him with his happy family and me with my unhappy one. Or maybe that wasn’t fair.
“I know that sounds like some awfulParent Trapshit,” I said. “Like they separated us or something. But we each chose the parent we wanted to go with. My dad always let Conner get away with anything—I think it was because he was a boy and the baby—whereas with me... well, I never felt like my dadgotme, I guess, or cared to try. It was an easy choice for both of us.”
That had been more than I’d said aloud to a stranger about my family for a long time. Weirdly, it felt a lot like how it felt to have Sam in this house at all, which I still had conditioning frommy childhood to believe was a place where you didnothave people inside. The experience was a little surreal, but not unpleasant.
“It sounds like a hard choice,” Sam said. “You were just kids.”
His face was too close to mine, his expression too sympathetic, his eyes too blue. I was saved from having to make any response by the cat, who finally crept out from under the bed on her belly, eyeing us warily as she approached the tuna.
I put my hand on Sam’s arm before I could think about it. His skin was still warm from even the brief walk over here, the lean muscles of his forearm hard beneath my fingertips. I wanted to leave my hand there forever. I wanted to give a squeeze.
“Shh,” I said unnecessarily. “It’s working.”
We watched Lenore lick the plate, as if she wanted to experience the taste of the treat without fully committing to it. I could relate.
“So what now?” Sam whispered.
Alison hadn’t gotten me that far. I snapped a quick picture of Lenore, shooting it off in a text with Sam’s question below it.
Once she’s settled in a bit, you should be able to pick her up with the plate and transfer both outside. Then just let her finish up her snack and voila, she’s out of the house.
Three dots blinked, then another message:That is, assuming you don’t want to keep her?? [gif of cat waving butt, then Shaq shimmying shoulders]
“I can’t have acat,” I said aloud.
