Page 90

He halted the thought and tipped back the remainder of his sparkling apple juice, a motion as familiar as washing his hands.

“It’ll be like the time we camped out to watch Twilight on opening night. Do you remember that?”

“I do.” Bradley chuckled. “Lana forgot to bring the tent poles, so we just huddled under limp fabric while it rained.”

“That was Sara’s fault.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You might be able to play the blame-the-twin card with somebody else, but not with me. I know you too well.”

“It was worth it, though,” Sara said. “Young Robert Pattinson.”

The three siblings let out a collective sigh.

“Or how about that time we spent hours trying to get through to that late-night psychic to find out if Bradley would land a date to the school dance?”

“He never could get a date to a school dance!”

A chorus of laughter.

“I don’t know how someone so tall for his age constantly struck out so badly with the ladies,” Sara teased.

“I didn’t strike out. I just didn’t care.”

“Oh sure.”

“Yeah right.”

“Or remember that time we convinced you to wear eyeliner to school?” Lana said. “Told you everyone would think you’d look cool like Michael Jackson.”

“Yeah, thanks for that. Girls were much less impressed by my moonwalk than I thought they’d be.”

Sara and Lana giggled.

“Seriously,” he said unseriously, “I probably spend just as much time in therapy talking about all the pranks you two used to pull on me as I do talking about being an addict.”

“Us? What about that time you—”

Chair legs scraped against the hardwood floor.

“Excuse me.” His father dropped his napkin onto an empty plate and started making his exit.

“There’s more stuffing and potatoes,” his mother called after him. “Another slice of turkey? And what about pie? We haven’t even served the pie yet.”

His father waved a backward hand as he continued in the direction of his study.

Lana put a hand on their mother’s arm.

“Well, then,” his mother said, visibly flustered, “where were we?”

“Pranks, I think.”

The women quickly picked up the conversational thread, but Bradley could only hear blood thrumming in his ears. Everything had been going so well. He’d been lulled into a sense of familial ease and Christmas spirit only to have his father rip it away. Why? For what possible reason? Was there something wrong with laughter and nostalgia and amazing food prepared with love?

Of course not.

There was something wrong with Bradley. That was why his father had left the second his plate was empty. Bradley was the problem.

Heat seeped into his cheeks as he twisted his empty champagne glass by the stem, experiencing the shape of it, the hollowness of it, how unnervingly right it felt in his fingertips.