True Places(98)

“Pissed off?”

She pressed her lips together and sighed. “I’m sorry I had to go away.”

“Well, you didn’t have to. You chose to.”

“It felt like ‘had to’ to me.”

“And it felt like ‘See ya sometime, maybe never’ to me.”

She got up and came toward him, looking like she might cry.

He backed away, pulled out his desk chair, and sat backward on it facing her. “I talked with Dad while you were gone. He gets that he should’ve listened to me about Brynn. He admits he wasn’t doing his job.”

“So why didn’t you come to me?”

“He asked me not to. You were flipping out over Brynn’s Beauty and the Beast stunt, remember?”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing, Mom! You let things slide almost as much as Dad does. You’re just like Alex’s parents. They don’t care what he does as long as he’s not a sociopath like his brother. Like that’s a valid goal. He takes a bunch of pills and their answer is more pills and a therapist. They don’t do anything different. They never even asked him why he did it.”

“I don’t see what all that has to do with you. Or with me.”

“I know you don’t.” He took a deep breath, wondering if he shouldn’t just stop talking. Too late for that, he concluded. “Look, Dad thinks I’m a loser, or at least he doesn’t hide how disappointed he is that I’m not, I don’t know, more like Brynn.” His mother started to disagree but he kept going. “But you make it worse. You try to run interference, but while you’re doing it, you’re secretly agreeing with him, wishing I’d be different to make things easier for you.” His mother’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. “What kind of message is that?”

“The wrong one.”

“I mean, you basically ignore the way Brynn acts because standing up to her is too hard. She bites, I get it. But then because I’m not aggressive like she is, you and Dad just roll right over me, or right past me.” Frustrated, he gripped the back of the chair and rocked it hard, feeling it loosen from the seat. “I’m not saying it right.”

“You’re saying it fine.”

He had expected her to launch a defense, but she didn’t. He’d thought there was something different about her when she first came in, and now he thought he knew what it was. There was confidence in her posture. Sadness, too, but with some swagger.

He remembered something he’d thought of on the way home. “Mom, think of it like this. If we lived in Portland, I’d be the most normal kid in school and Brynn would be the freak.”

She smiled and broke into a long, loose laugh. She reached out her hand. He took it and smiled, feeling for the first time in as long as he could remember that his mom really did understand after all, and that whatever had stopped her from expressing it before probably had nothing to do with him.





CHAPTER 44

Whit carried two glasses of malbec into the bedroom and set them on the bedside table. Almost nine o’clock and Detective DeCelle had just left. Suzanne was changing in the closet behind the half-closed door, and all three kids were watching a movie in the living room. Whit sat on the chaise and took off his shoes. What he really wanted to do was drink a glass of wine, make love to his wife, and sleep with his arm around her the entire night. But that was fantasy. Whit didn’t know what Suzanne’s return meant, since they hadn’t had time alone to talk. He was afraid of that conversation and would do almost anything to avoid it, anything short of losing her.

And that seemed to be precisely where they were.

Wasn’t it only a couple of weeks ago that he felt certain everything was coming together for him? What, really, had changed? Not him. Suzanne, then. His wife had changed.

He picked up one of the glasses and took a long sip. Suzanne emerged from the closet wearing gray pajamas and a thin darker-gray robe. He stood and passed her the wine.

“Cheers,” she said.

“To finding Iris’s father.”

She nodded and drank her wine. “Seems likely they’ll find him soon. I hope that turns out to be a positive for Iris.”

“Even just knowing what happened will help, don’t you think?”

“I do.”

They stood two feet apart with their glasses of wine, stalled in conversation. If he weren’t shoeless and she weren’t in pajamas, they could’ve been strangers at a reception, failing at small talk. But there was nothing small about the anxiety circulating like poison through Whit’s body. He was too afraid to ask Suzanne point-blank if their marriage was failing or had already failed. He reached for another topic. If they kept talking, they would stay married.

“You gave the detective the same address you gave me over the phone,” he said. “I guess I assumed when you asked me to look into it, you were doing it to help find Iris’s father.” Suzanne moved away and sat on the chaise, concentrating on her glass. “But you didn’t give him the report I printed for you.”

“You can email it to him. I should’ve said that.”

“But what did you want it for?”

She pushed her hair away from her face and held his gaze. “I have an idea about something I want to do.”