"Don't be sorry. I just wish I had known."
"I don't know what to do."
"Can you afford an apartment on your own?"
"No." I wipe my nose, leaving a snail trail of snot along my dirty cardigan sleeve. "My credit is good, but when they ask for a recent pay stub, I can't show them the one with all my PTO paid out. They'll know. I have a little bit in my savings, but I don't want to use that all up."
"Have you called your father?"
"I've been avoiding it."
"Call your father."
"I don't want him to know yet."
Compassion and concern fill her voice. "Why?"
"I don'twantto go home."
"Is this your only option?"
Iwantto dig my heels into the ground and deny that moving home is my only option. I could find the homeless man outside the ER and ask if he has any room in his cardboard box. I could buy a tent and live on Skid Row.
"What's so bad about home?"
"Did you know my mom passed away?"
"Oh my darling, no, I didn't. Recently?"
"No, I was sixteen. She had an aggressive form of cancer that took her from us four months after her diagnosis. It was awful. She was here one day, gone the next. We were devastated. I have no other siblings, so it was just my dad and me."
"I'm so sorry. Your dad lives alone?"
"No, a year after my mom passed, I suggested he join a support group. I found a widow/widower one with members his age. I figured it would help him talk openly with other people dealing with the same loss."
"That's so sweet of you."
"I never would have done it had I known he'd find his next wife there."
"He remarried?"
"Yes, he met Molly there. Her husband was killed in Afghanistan. They shared their stories and sympathized together. She has a son my age named Theo."
Theo.
I haven't said his name aloud in years.
"I didn't know you had a stepmom, let alone a stepbrother."
"I barely know him. The timing of it all was...a hard situation to grasp. It was a tiny wedding ceremony followed by these two strangers moving into my childhood home with us. Theo and I only had to live together for the summer before we moved out and went to college."
"Where did Theo end up going?"
Fuck if I know.
"From what I can remember," I begin. "He ended up dropping out of college within the first month and went overseas to backpack and volunteer for Habitat for Humanity."
"You weren't happy your dad remarried?"
