Chapter Seventeen
Caroline winced when her father ordered his steak well-done, with a side of ketchup. Their server was too skilled to so much as blink—in fact, she’d probably pegged Caroline’s dad for a charred-steak-and-ketchup kind of a guy when he stomped over to her table. Nevertheless, Caroline mentally apologized to the cow that had worked hard for its whole life to become a good steak only to be consumed as gritty carbon and toddler sauce.
She wasn’t sure whether it was useless yearning or spite that made her select the restaurant Adrian had planned for their first date, but neither was very productive of a nice dinner with her parents. She had probably made a mistake in picking this restaurant either way; the menu was heavy on seafood, and moules and langoustines were as foreign to her parents as ancient Greek. Her father had already complained about the prices and the menu options. She should have just taken them to the Olive Garden out on I-90, even though she was paying and he’d ordered steak with french fries instead of anything exotic.
She supposed she’d had some inchoate hope of impressing her parents with the restaurant choice. Her father didn’t look impressed: he had his arms crossed on his broad chest, eyes narrowed amid his sunburned features as he surveyed the black-and-white photographs of Paris adorning the wall over their table.
Caroline had inherited her height and coloring from him, along with her athletic abilities. Raymond Sedlacek was a big, loud man, used to getting his way on and off the court. Caroline had always thought she’d gotten most of her personality from her mother, but then again, Nancy Sedlacek had never done a shocking thing in her life. Caroline might be more like her father than she’d thought.
“What are you going to order, sweetie?” her mother whispered to her as her father finished instructing their server on how to burn his meat.
“Sole meunière,” Caroline told her.
“What’s that?” her father demanded, overhearing them.
“Fish.”
He sniffed disdainfully.
Caroline’s big breakthrough on fish had come when she realized that, like vegetables, fish were edible if doused in butter and garlic before she put them in her mouth. She hadn’t informed Adrian of that important scientific discovery yet, and now she didn’t know if she ever would.
She was still thinking in terms ofyet, despite no particular reason to think she’d ever speak to him again. She hadn’t heard from him at all. Not the next day, not on Thanksgiving, not since her parents had arrived. It had been almost a week.
Not that she would have wanted him to meet her parents. She was grimly amused as she imagined him there at dinner: watching as Caroline’s father ruined his steak and Caroline butchered the pronunciation of her fish, ordering escargot or something that would appall the rest of the table.Yes, snails. They’re excellent here. No, you probably wouldn’t like them.
Even so, when her mother had asked if she was still dating the man she’d met online, Caroline said “Sort of,” which was sort of true.Adrianhadn’t said anythingdefinitive, after all. And maybe if Caroline rang him up and said, “Hey, I’ve thought about it, and it probably wouldn’t be so bad formeif we saw each other after your shifts at TGI Fridays,” he’d come back to her apartment, and they’d pretend like he wasn’t trying to ruin his life on her account—while it lasted.
The inevitable failure of their relationship was what had stopped her, every time her hand inched for her phone. Because if she felt this wretched now, when she was reasonably certain she had done the right thing, how bad would she feel when it all blew up in a few months, if she hadn’t?
“Is he a student too?” Caroline’s mother followed up.
“No, he graduated a while ago,” Caroline said.
“What’s he do, then?” her father asked.
“He’s a painter,” Caroline said. Residual loyalty had her add, “He owns his own business.”
Her father grunted, but with less judgment than he’d shown most of the other features of Caroline’s life. He was probably imagining that Adrian painted houses, not portraits, but he’d approve of Caroline taking up with someone in a trade, especially a portable one. Her parents still thought she was coming home to Templeton at some point, preferably sooner rather than later. Caroline was closer to that than she’d been since she’d decided she was keeping her grandmother’s money, all of it, since climbing out the bathroom window to escape her father’s insistence that she sign the money back over to him and her uncle. But it was none of their money—it had been Gam’s, and what Gam wanted should have meant something, shouldn’t it?
Caroline hadn’t thought it was right, that she would get all the money. But she also hadn’t thought it was right that she would get none of it. Like everything else, she’d explained her plans poorly, and her family still didn’tbelieve that Caroline would split the money with them as soon as she did what Gam had told her to do: go live a big life. And she wastrying.She just wasn’t succeeding yet.
Her apartment, her school, her recreational activities: none of these had passed muster under review. Her father wasted no opportunity to point out that she could have had a bigger apartment for half the price down in Texas. Her mother quietly mentioned that they’d missed her at her niece’s birthday party. Her father mused that there wasn’t a single employer in Templeton who cared if she finished her MBA. They were both very sadly unsurprised that when they asked if there was anyone she wanted to join them for dinner, she admitted that there was not.
It all had a subtext to it:Account for yourself, Caroline.
If her life were a ledger, she would credit all the money she’d spent on tuition, rent, and entertainment expense. What had she gained in exchange? Sitting there with her parents, she was hard-pressed to show any personal benefit. She did not have any of the assets she’d hoped to acquire. No boyfriend, no social life. No job offer. No veneer of sophistication or even normalcy.
“Do you think you’ll make it home over winter break?” her mother asked once their lunches had arrived.
Caroline busied herself with deboning her fish as she considered the answer. Her gut reaction had always been, no, she wasn’t going home, not now, not ever again. But how could she justify that, even to herself? What else was she going to do over the three-week break? Being alone over Thanksgiving had been hard enough. She’d cooked a turkey just to have something to do, but the smallest turkey she could buy was seven pounds, and even that was too much turkey for one person to consume over the relevant depreciation period. She’d texted Tom that night tosee if he wanted some leftovers, but he’d written back to say that he was in New York meeting prospective roommates. Caroline had spent way too much time trying to decode the number of emojis and exclamation points on his brief reply, ultimately deciding that he hadn’t spoken to Adrian either. She didn’t know where Adrian had spent Thanksgiving if Tom still assumed he was with her.
“I probably will,” Caroline slowly said, and both her parents nodded and relaxed.
“That’s great, honey,” said her mother. “I haven’t moved anything in your room.”
Caroline gave her a bland smile and pictured the Holiday Inn two miles from her house, where she’d lived for three weeks after the last time she saw her father. That would probably be safest. She didn’t put it past her uncle to ambush her before she’d had her coffee and make another stab at convincing her to sign away Gam’s money.
“How’s your tennis game?” her father asked with a tone that suggested that they’d finally turned to serious questions.
