“It’s fine,” I said. “I get it. You were protecting me.”
“Protecting us both. Your dad would never forgive me if I took advantage of you.”
“Dad loved you. And he trusted me to take care of myself.”
Joe frowned. “I figure that should be the other way around. He loved you. And he should have been able to trust me.”
I blinked. I’d always been proud of my father’s unquestioning faith in me. Even when I didn’t deserve it. Even when the pressure not to let him down was overwhelming. “Dad did trust you. He made you his partner.”
“That was business. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
So flattering. “Because then you’d be cheating on Brittany.”
“Britt had nothing to do with it.”
“You married her.”
“Three years later.”
“My senior year,” I remembered. I’d missed the wedding. The ghost of my adolescent self whispered in my ear, prodding me on. “How long did that last, anyway?”
He gave me a long, unreadable look. “Five months.”
“Oops. Ouch. That’s awful. I’m sorry.” I was swamped with guilt. And curiosity. “What happened?”
Another look, like he couldn’t believe I was asking. “Turns out we wanted different things.”
“What kind of things?”
“I wanted to be married,” Joe said. “And she wanted to go to Vegas.”
“Because…?”
He shrugged. “Why does anybody go to Vegas?”
“To gamble?”
“Gambling’s for suckers. Brittany’s not the sucker here.” A pause. Like he thought he was the sucker. “Heard she’s workingin a casino now.” He laid each sentence down deliberately, like a card in a game I didn’t know how to play.
I wanted to pick them up. To study them. To know him. Maybe even to comfort him? Which was dumb. I should change the subject. Ask about the workbench.
“My boyfriend’s moving to Atlanta at the end of the month,” I heard myself say.
“But here you are.”
I liked the way he said it, not as a question, not as a challenge, but accepting it as my choice to make. “For now.” I turned the casserole dish over in my hands. There was a strip of masking tape on the bottom with his name on it.miller.I picked at it with my thumb. “Did you ever think about going with her? To Vegas?”
“No.” And then, when I’d given up on getting anything more, he laid another card on the table. “Hailey was only eleven. My mom, your dad, depended on me. I didn’t have any reason to go.”
“And Brittany?”
He was silent so long I thought he wouldn’t answer. The dog leaned against his leg, and he bent to scratch behind her ears. “She didn’t have any reason to stay.”
“You were married.”
“That wasn’t enough for her.Iwasn’t enough.”
My heart squeezed. I knew that feeling. I fought a ridiculous urge to pat him, to comfort him the way he was petting the dog.
