My dad did his best as a single parent, but he worked long hours, and besides, it wasn’t like he was ever going to teach me how to do my hair or give me advice on flirting with boys. Some things you just needed a mom for.
I thought about asking Claire what her mother was like since the woman was currently out with my father but decided against it. Our parents’ date would probably be a one-time thing. Ms. Nash wasn’t my dad’s usual type. He generally wentfor sophisticated lawyers in their forties who were as busy as him and liked debating precedents over dinner. Not young fitness instructors.
Claire and I continued painting, and somehow, after our rough start, talking to her got easier. We even joked around about drama stuff and ended up laughing about what our school would be like as a musical. Personally, I would’ve paid good money to see Mrs. Tsuru break out into song and perform a dance number.
Cooper and I may not have worked out our issues, but by the time I drove Claire home, I felt like the two of us had.
7
Cooper
When I finished work, Mom wasn’t home. She’d told me she might not be, but I hadn’t believed her. She’d left the school with Mr. Seibold around two o’clock. It was seven thirty. Getting something to eat didn’t take that long, and there was no way they were discussing Madeline’s and my punishment for over five hours. What were they doing?
Claire had made mac and cheese with hot dogs for dinner and was working on her homework at the kitchen table.
“Have you heard from Mom?” I asked as I put the car keys away.
“Yeah, she’s still out with Mr. Seibold. She seemed pretty happy about it, so I guess your detention wasn’t all bad.”
Happy? This was not good news. Men like Mr. Seibold impressed and manipulated women with their money, and Mom might be more than a little susceptible to a wealthy man. Money was what she and my father always fought about.
I got a fork, sat down at the table, and started in on the mac and cheese. “She shouldn’t be anywhere with him. It’s too soon after the divorce for her to date.” That’s what she’d always said before when men asked her out.
“It’s been nine months,” Claire pointed out. Six months separated and three divorced. She said this like I might haveforgotten how long it had been since Dad packed his stuff and left. I hadn’t forgotten. I’d been the one to drive him to the airport.
“Right,” I said, “they could still work things out.”
Claire fixed me with a pitying look. “They’re not going to work things out. That’s the whole point of getting divorced.”
Claire hadn’t been there when I’d dropped Dad off at the airport. He sat in the car, talking with me for so long that I thought he’d miss his flight. I’d hoped he would miss it.
He said he hated not being able to see the rest of my football games. He told me to take care of Claire and my mother. Then he got emotional. “This is her choice, not mine,” he said. “She complained about me not having a job, and now she’s complaining that I have one. I keep trying to get ahead, and maybe this time ...” He looked out the window and sighed as though even he’d stopped believing that this new career would work out.
Dad had never made much money. When my parents were first married, he joined the military and after he got out of that, he worked as a long-haul truck driver. The company kept promising they’d move him up to management, but after years of being passed over, he got tired of being strung along and quit. He just walked out one day.
My parents had a big fight about that. He was unemployed for several months, and as the bills piled up, so did my parents’ arguments. That was when my dad decided to take a job on an oil rig in Alaska, and my mom filed for a divorce.
“I don’t blame her for being upset about my jobs,” Dad had said. “My luck has always been lousy. But I do blame her for not sticking with me when I’m trying my best.”
He seemed to crumple then. He put his hands to his face and his shoulders shook with tears. I’d never seen him cry in mylife and had no idea how to comfort him, no idea what to say. I hugged him and babbled a lot of things I don’t remember. The last thing I said, though, I remember that. “You can convince her to change her mind.”
“I don’t know about that anymore.” He pulled away from me, scrubbed a hand over his face, and steered away from that topic. “You won’t have a problem with money,” he told me. “You’ll have more than enough in the NFL.”
That future might or might not happen, but I knew one thing for certain: whatever money I made would be too late to fix what I wanted it to—my parents’ problems.
Claire was still staring at me like I was delusional for hoping our parents could mend things.
“Mom shouldn’t date Mr. Seibold,” I said. “He’s rich and smarmy.”
“What’s wrong with rich men?” Claire asked. “I’d put up with a lot of smarminess for a convertible and the clothes Madeline wears.”
Well, probably not the clothes she wore today. “Don’t even think like that. I have two words for you: Madeline, stepsister.”
Claire tapped her pencil against her lips. “Is that three words? Is stepsister one word or two?”
I stabbed some macaroni with my fork. “Stepsister wasn’t the important word in that sentence. Madeline was.”
“Madeline isn’t so bad.”
