“That sigh you just let out,” he said. “Seriously. It was almost deafening.”
“Oh,” I said. The lights were going over the slight bump now, disappearing down to the main road. The turn signal was already on. In a few minutes, they’d be on the highway. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “I just noticed. You all right?”
I’d been overthinking my actions and carefully crafting my responses for hours now. Honestly, I had no more energy for it. So instead of answering, I just sat down right where we were, on the curb between our two houses, and pulled my knees to my chest. Dave plopped down beside me, and we just sat there for a minute, listening to the music thumping behind my neighbors’ closed front door.
“I don’t get along with my mom,” I told him after a moment. “At all. I think . . . I think I even hate her sometimes.”
He considered this. Then he said, “Well, that explains the tension.”
“You felt that?”
“Hard to miss,” he replied. He reached down, picking at his shoe, then looked up at me. “Whatever it’s about, she’s trying really hard. Like,reallyhard.”
“Too hard.”
“Maybe.”
“Too hard,” I said again, and this time, he was silent. I took a breath, cold, then added, “She cheated on my dad. With Peter. Left him, got pregnant, got married. It was a mess.”
A car drove by, slowed, then kept going. Dave said, “That’s pretty harsh.”
“Yeah.” I pulled my knees tighter against me. “But, see, that’s the thing. You can acknowledge that, that easily. But she can’t. She never has.”
“Surprising,” he replied. “It’s kind of obvious.”
“Don’t you think?” I turned, facing him. “I mean, if you can understand that what she did was wrong, why can’t she?”
“But,” he replied, “those aren’t the same, though.”
I just looked at him as another car passed. “What?”
“First you said she wouldn’t acknowledge what she’d done,” he replied. “Right? Then you asked why she didn’t understand it. Those are two different things entirely.”
“They are?”
“Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn’t. But understanding . . . that’s where things get sticky.”
“That’s us,” I said. “Seriously sticky. For years now.”
“I can relate,” he said.
We sat there for a moment. He was picking at the grass, the blades squeaking between his fingers, while I just stared straight ahead. Finally, I said, “So your parents really freaked when you got arrested, huh?”
“ ‘ Freaked’ is putting it mildly,” he said. “It was basically a family DEFCON 5. Total breakdown.”
“Seems kind of extreme.”
“They thought I was out of control,” he said.
“Wasn’t it just one beer, at one party?”
“It was,” he agreed. “But I’d never done anything like that before. Not even close. I hadn’t even been to a high school party until a few weeks earlier.”
“Big changes,” I said.
“Exactly.” He sat back, leaning on his palms. “In their minds, it’s all the fault of Frazier Bakery. When I started working there, my downward spiral began.”
