He said, “You are not the only one hurting, Conrad. You don’t get to talk to me that way.”
“I think I do.”
The room was deadly quiet and Mr. Fisher looked like he might hit Conrad, he was so mad. They stared at each other, and I knew Conrad wouldn’t be the one to back down.
It was Mr. Fisher who looked away. “The movers are coming back, Conrad. This is happening. You throwing a tantrum can’t stop it.”
He left soon after. He said he’d be back in the morning, and the words were ominous. He said that he wasstaying at the inn in town. It was clear that he couldn’t wait to get out of that house.
The three of us stood around in the kitchen after he was gone, none of us saying anything. Least of all me. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. For once, I wished I was at home with my mother and Steven and Taylor, away from all of this.
Jeremiah was the first to speak. “I can’t believe he’s really selling the house,” he said, almost to himself.
“Believe it,” Conrad said harshly.
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Jeremiah demanded. Conrad glanced at me before saying, “I didn’t think you needed to know.”
Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell, Conrad? It’s my house too.”
“Jere, I only just found out myself.” Conrad propped himself up on the kitchen counter, his head down. “I was at home picking up some clothes. That real estate agent, Sandy, called and left a message on the machine, saying movers were coming to get the stuff they packed. I went back to school and got my stuff and I came straight here.”
Conrad had dropped school and everything else to come to the summer house, and here we’d just thought he was a screwup in need of saving. When in actuality, he was the one doing the saving.
I felt guilty for not giving him the benefit of thedoubt, and I knew Jeremiah did too. We exchanged a quick look and I knew we were thinking exactly the same thing. Then I guess he remembered he was pissed at me, too, and he looked away.
“So that’s it, then?” Jeremiah said.
Conrad didn’t answer him right away. Then he looked up and said, “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Well, great job taking care of all this, Con.”
“I’ve been handling this on my own,” Conrad snapped. “It’s not like I had any help from you.”
“Well, maybe if you’d told me about it—”
Conrad cut him off. “You’d have done what?”
“I would have talked to Dad.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Conrad could not have sounded more disdainful.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that you’re so busy being up his ass, you can’t see him for who he is.”
Jeremiah didn’t say anything right away, and I was really afraid of where this was heading. Conrad was looking for a fight and the last thing we needed was for the two of them to start wrestling on the kitchen floor, breaking things and each other. This time, my mother wasn’t here to stop them. There was just me, and that was hardly anything.
And then Jeremiah said, “He’s our father.” His voice was measured, even, and I let out a tiny breath of relief.There wouldn’t be any fight, because Jeremiah wouldn’t let it happen. I admired him for that.
But Conrad just shook his head in disgust. “He’s a dirtbag.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“What kind of guy cheats on his wife and then leaves her when she has cancer? What kind of man does that? I can’t even stand to look at him. He makes me sick, playing the martyr now, the grieving widower. But where was he when Mom needed him, huh, Jere?”
“I don’t know, Con. Where were you?”
The room went silent, and it felt to me like the air was almost crackling. The way Conrad flinched, the way Jeremiah sucked in his breath right after he said it. He wanted to take it back, I could tell, and he was about to, when Conrad said, conversationally, “That’s a low blow.”
