“Don’t you ‘Laure’ me. How could you let her drink? I count on you, Jeremiah. You know that.”
Now I felt awful too. The last thing I wanted was for Belly to get in trouble, and I really hated the thought of Laurel thinking badly of me. I’d always tried so hard to look out for Belly, unlike Conrad. If anyone had corrupted her, it was Conrad, not me. Even though I was the one who bought the tequila, not him.
I said, “I’m really sorry. It’s just that with my dad’s sellingthe house, and it being our last night, we got carried away. I swear, Laure, it’ll never happen again.”
She rolled her eyes. “?‘It’ll never happen again’? Don’t make promises you can’t keep, hon.”
“It’ll never happen again on my watch,” I told her.
Pursing her lips, she said, “We’ll see.”
I was relieved when she gave me another grimace-smile. “Hurry up and get to the store, will you?”
“Aye aye, sir.” I wanted her to smile for real. I knew that if I kept trying, kept joking, she would. She was easy that way.
This time, she really did smile back at me.
chapterthirty-six
My mother was right. The shower helped. I tilted my face toward the shower head and let the hot water wash over me and I felt much, much better.
After my shower, I came back downstairs a new woman. My mother was wearing lipstick, and she and Conrad were talking in low voices.
They stopped talking when they saw me standing in the doorway. “Much better,” my mother said.
“Where’s Jeremiah?” I asked.
“Jeremiah went back to the store. He forgot the grapefruit,” she said.
The timer went off and my mother took muffins out of the oven with a dish towel. She accidentally touched the muffin tin with her bare hand and she yelped and dropped the tin on the floor, muffin side down. “Damn!”
Conrad asked if she was okay before I could. “I’m fine,” she said, running cold water over her hand.
Then she picked the tin back up and set it on the counter, on top of the towel. I sat down on one of the counter stools and watched my mother empty the muffin tin into a basket. “Our little secret,” she said.
The muffins were supposed to cool a little while before you took them out of the tin, but I didn’t tell her that. A few were smushed but they mostly looked okay.
“Have a muffin,” she said.
I took one, and it was burning hot and falling apart, but it was good. I ate it quickly.
When I was done, my mother said, “You and Conrad take the recycling out.”
Without a word, Conrad picked up two of the heavier bags and left me the half-empty one. I followed him outside to the trashcans at the end of the driveway.
“Did you call her?” he asked me.
“I guess I did.” I waited for him to call me a baby for calling my mommy the second things got scary.
He didn’t. Instead, he said, “Thanks.”
I stared at him. “Sometimes you surprise me,” I said.
He didn’t look at me when he said, “And you hardly ever surprise me. You’re still the same.”
I glared at him. “Thanks a lot.” I dumped my garbage bag in the bin and shut the lid a little too hard.
“No, I mean…”
