“Well, youdoact like an overprotective dad. I feel like you’ve been unreasonable about Boone.”
Dan shifted in his chair and muttered, “Things have happened way too quickly. I know you could say the same thing about Lula and me, but your thing feels different.”
“Because you think I’m not as responsible as you are?”
“Nova, I know you’re responsible, but we’ve gone through a lot of changes over the last year. You moved here to make me happy. I guess I hoped you’d settle into this life for a while.”
Studying my brother’s face shadowed by his hat, I asked in a softer tone, “Why don’t you like Boone?”
“I don’t know him,” Dan said and tensed. “It’s not even that. I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“If this is a conversation we should have.”
“I’m an adult. I feel like you knew that about me back in Baton Rouge. Lately, you act as if I’m a dummy who needs to be locked away.”
Dan rolled his eyes. “That’s not fair. We’ve lived together for years. I saw how you raised the girls and the way you stayed strong after the shooting. I’ve also seen how you’ve held yourself since we moved here. I respect the woman you are.”
“Then, why can’t we have this conversation?”
Dan rubbed his eyes and seemed ready to shut down. Instead of silence, he blurted out, “I never knew Chris. I don’t know if he seemed like a nice guy. Maybe I would have liked him like I do Boone. Or maybe I would have known Chris was a piece of shit. But I can’t be sure because I wasn’t around.”
Dan’s voice revealed the pain he’d been holding onto for years. I understood he needed to keep our mom and me at a distance if he hoped to build a new life for himself.
“You feel guilty for leaving.”
“No, I feel guilty for not coming back,” Dan said and studied me. “I should have been there for you, but I was frustrated with Laverne. Though she had options, she kept marrying assholes.”
Taking my brother’s hand, I said, “You wanted to save her.”
“Probably, but she kept saying she didn’t need to be saved. And she never told me that you needed saving. Did she know Chris was hurting you?”
“Yes,” I said, remembering how my mom talked about me leaving Chris after Lyric was born. “She planned to help me get my own place.”
“Why not move you into her house?”
“You know why. Mom was messed up in the head about men.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, but it was obvious, wasn’t it? When Mom ran off with our dad, her family warned that she was sinning. When he turned out to be a monster, it broke her. Having a husband that her family approved of mattered more than her happiness.”
“Or our happiness.”
Nodding, I felt a pang of grief. “I sometimes believe Mom would be alive if I had gone wild years ago. I think maybe she would have seen herself in me. She might have rebelled against her family.”
“She made her choices.”
“I did, too. No one made me marry Chris. I wanted a husband so much that I didn’t see his red flags.”
As his dark eyes studied me, Dan asked, “What kind of red flags?”
Shrugging, I thought back to how Chris didn’t direct his temper toward me until we’d been married for a few months.
“He would get frustrated about dumb things and hold grudges against people. He hid his ugly side until I was pregnantwith Skylar. But I’d seen how he’d feed his resentment toward people rather than shrugging it off. His anger would build and build until he’d get drunk and start a fight at a bar.”
Dan stared as if seeing me for the first time.
