“That’s good.”
“Absolutely,” he says. “Look, I know you’re busy, so I’ll let you go.”
He’s definitely wanting to end the call. “All right. I love you!” I say.
“Back at you.” This is our standard sign-off, but under the circumstances, I don’t feel good about it. I don’t feel good at all.
I hang up and wander back into the house. Brett looks at me. “Bad news?”
“Yeah, sort of.” I muster a smile. “It’s that obvious?”
“I make a living reading clients’ facial expressions and body language, because they’re often too polite to say what they really think. So either you just had an upsetting phone call or you hate the house.”
“It’s not the house.”
“Well, then, let’s get out of here and go for a drink. I don’t want the bad mojo to bleed onto the place, because I think you could really like it.”
“I could use a drink.” My parents are having my brother and pregnant sister-in-law over for dinner this evening, and I’m not looking forward to it.
We settle at a bar named the Tiki. Through a large tinted plate-glass window, I watch waves bob on the Puget Sound, one after another, white-capped and foamy. I know that the water’s cold, despite the bar’s tropical decor. I feel cold, too, despite the unusually warm weather. I order a glass of wine. “This is one of the perks of not trying to get pregnant,” I say. “I can drink.”
“Sue Anne hated everything about being pregnant. She complained the whole time.”
“Really? And here I’d give anything to have a baby.”
“My mom said she felt the same way.”
I look at him, not getting it.
“My mom couldn’t have children,” he explains. “My brother and I are adopted.”
This shocks me. “But you look so much like her!”
“Everyone says that. Know what I think?”
“What?”
“People see what they expect to see.” He gives a slight grin. “I think that’s one of the great unspoken truths of life.”
“Maybe so. Did you ever look for your birth mother?”
“No. There was a nanosecond when I was fifteen and rebellious, and I told my parents I wanted to find her and go live with her. My dad said, ‘Okay. I’ll help.’” Brett smiles. “That was the end of it. I never had any real desire to follow through. No one could have made me feel more loved than my folks did.”
The waitress brings our drinks. Brett hoists his beer. “Here’s to finding you a home in Seattle.”
I clink my wineglass to his stein. “To a home in Seattle.”
We both take a drink, and he studies me over the edge of his mug. “I know it’s none of my business, and if you don’t want to, I totally get it. But if you want to talk about that phone call, well, I’m a good listener.”
I sip my wine for a moment. “I screwed something up.”
“Hey, that’s called being human.”
“No, I mean Ireallyscrewed up. I did something seriously wrong—a breach-of-trust kind of thing with Zack.”
His expression stays the same, but his neck kind of stiffens. “Another guy?”
“No, not that. But I went behind Zack’s back to find out some personal stuff from his past, and, well, now it’s backfiring.”
