Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(33)

“Mom said to tell you that the weather’s supposed to start clearing up and she’ll drop us at the pool in a little while if you want to go,” Lucy informs him.

“Maybe.” He nibbles the ragged edge of his thumbnail and wonders if any of his friends will be around. Probably not. Just about everyone is away. His friend Ian will be home tomorrow, though. He texted earlier to see if Ryan wants to hang out.

“Can’t, dude,” Ryan replied. “I’m seeing my dad.”

“That sucks,” was Ian’s response.

“Yeah,” Ryan texted back automatically—then wondered if he really did agree.

He misses Dad, yeah. And he’d give anything to be able to go away fishing with him, just the two of them. But it’s not like he can’t wait to spend a gorgeous summer Sunday in some boring restaurant with his sisters. Dad doesn’t seem to have a lot to say to any of them when he takes them out to eat, and spends a lot of time checking his BlackBerry.

Probably because of that lady, Beth. She calls and texts and e-mails Dad. A lot.

Ryan knows she’s his father’s girlfriend, but Dad hasn’t actually come out and said it. Mom hasn’t, either. But last spring when Ryan was at the snack bar putting ketchup on a couple of hot dogs before a Little League game, he overheard two of his teammates’ mothers talking about some guy having an affair and dumping his wife—dumping his whole family, pretty much.

At first, he didn’t realize they were talking about his own parents. The moment he figured it out, he knew he was going to throw up. He dumped the hot dogs into the garbage and ran to the bathroom. Then he asked the coach to let him sit on the bench that game because he was sick, and the team lost.

“So are you going to get rid of anything?”

Startled by his sister’s question, Ryan looks up to see her surveying the piles of stuff around his room: books, school projects from last spring, a million comic books, a million baseball caps, fishing equipment, sports equipment, clean and dirty laundry…

He wishes, not for the first time, that his bedroom door had a lock on it. But none of the rooms in this house lock, other than the upstairs bathroom—which Ryan wishes didn’t have a lock on it, because Lucy is always in there for hours and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Mom said we have to clean out our rooms for the tag sale, too,” she tells him.

“What’s a tag sale?”

Ryan sees Sadie in the hallway, listening in, as usual. There’s no privacy around this house. None.

“It’s where people give away stuff they don’t want anymore,” Lucy explains. “Did you see all those boxes Mom and I filled up downstairs?”

“Yeah.”

“Those are for the tag sale.”

“Do I have to give something away?” Sadie asks, looking worried.

“Well, now that you’re a big girl, there are probably some toys you’ve outgrown, and some clothes, too, so—”

Sadie bursts into tears so abruptly that Ryan finds himself actually feeling sorry for her—which he rarely does, because it’s not easy to be the only guy in a house full of women, including a little crybaby sister who’s always making a scene.

“You don’t have to give away your toys, Sades,” he assures her.

Lucy nods vigorously. “Just the ones you don’t play with anymore. Like that My Little Pony set you got for—”

“I play with that!” Sadie wails. “I play with everything!”

“What is going on up there?” Mom’s voice calls from the foot of the stairs.

Great. Just great.

Sadie bellows, “Lucy and Ryan said I have to give away my toys!”

“I did not!” Ryan protests. “I said you didn’t!”

“Mom, I was just saying that Sadie can get rid of the stuff she’s too big to play with,” Lucy calls, and Sadie cries harder.

“I play with all my toys!”

“Will you all please just get out of my room?” Ryan goes over and kicks the door closed in his sisters’ faces.

God, he hates his life.



Brett sighs behind his newspaper, and Elsa, seated in the opposite chair, looks up from her book. “What’s wrong?” “I can’t believe I’m just sitting around on a Saturday afternoon. I had so many things I wanted to do today”—he lowers the paper to look at her—“and if it weren’t raining out there, I’d be rushing from one thing to the next.”

“Like mowing the lawn?”

“And playing golf, and getting the car washed, and watching the Yankees–Red Sox…”

The televised game is in an indefinite rain delay. Every ten minutes or so, Brett reaches for the remote to turn on the TV in hopes that it might have started, but the field remains covered with a tarp, the announcers making idle on-air chatter.

“Maybe we can go to a movie or something,” Elsa suggests. “Want to check the paper and see if anything good is playing over at the Cineplex?”

“Already did. Nothing. But there was something interesting here.” He leafs back through the pages, folds the paper open to an article, and hands it across to her.

“What am I looking at?”

“The article about the new upscale condo community they’re building over by the golf course.”