Rebound (Seattle Steelheads #1)(24)

“I always am. But if it makes you feel better—I promise.”

“Good. Thank you.”

She didn’t seem to feel better.

I wasn’t sure I did either.

*

“They gave us the list of band trips for the year.” My son, David, slid a folded and slightly crinkled paper across the kitchen counter. “And how much they cost.”

I put the spatula aside and picked up the paper. As soon as I’d unfolded it, my eyes went right to the total at the bottom. Travel, uniforms, and God knew what else—almost fifteen hundred for the year. I knew teenagers were supposed to be expensive, but Jesus. Exhaling, I put the paper aside and continued nudging vegetables around in the stir fry. “Are they going to be doing any fundraising? We might need to look into that.” I glanced at him, and his expression had hardened. It didn’t take a mind reader to know what he was thinking.

Marcus could have paid for it.

Marcus would have paid for it.

“I’ll talk to Mom too,” I added. “But…any help we can get…”

“Awesome,” he muttered. “Yeah, they’re doing fundraising. They don’t make much money, though.”

Neither do your mother and I. I didn’t say that out loud. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said instead. “We might have to postpone your driver’s ed for a few—”

“Seriously?” he grumbled.

I shot him a look, and though he obviously wasn’t happy about it, he let it go. At least he didn’t remind me who had paid for his sister to go to driver’s ed last year. God help me when it came time for the conversation about how—or if—we were going to get him a car.

Sighing, I shifted my focus back to cooking. I knew damn well the kids’ anger wasn’t really about Marcus’s money. They weren’t spoiled, and they’d been through enough lean years while I was on active duty that they didn’t take stability for granted. Money was just an easy target. It was a hell of a lot easier to get mad about that, because all the other shit—all the emotional blackmail Marcus had used on all of this—made them cry. And me.

David and Claire struggled to articulate their feelings about their stepdad vanishing, and I didn’t know how to say he never really loved them without saying he never really loved them. So they passive aggressively reminded me that leaving Marcus had fucked us all financially, and I took the cowardly road and didn’t tell them the truth.

Never thought my family would put the “fun” back in dysfunctional, but here we fucking are.

I turned off the burner and moved the pan to a cooler one. Keeping my tone level, I said, “David, could you let your sister know dinner’s ready?”

“’kay.” He shuffled out of the kitchen. “Claire. Dinner.”

I supposed that was one advantage to our tiny apartment. Instead of shouting up the stairs and hoping she heard him from the opposite end of the hall and through her bedroom door, he only had to shout from the edge of the living room to her door six feet away. Silver linings, I guess.

Claire, David, and I took our usual seats at the dinner table. No one spoke while we filled our plates and started eating.

Claire was the first to break the silence, though she didn’t look at me. “Was that really you in the video with Asher Crowe?”

Oh. Well. I guess I should have known that would become a conversation piece in this house. Reaching for my water glass, I nodded. “The one outside the restaurant? Yeah. That was me.”

“What happened?” She glanced up from picking at her food. “Is it true his boyfriend smashed up his car?”

I forced back a shudder, thankful I hadn’t been there to witness the moment Nathan had lost his temper and taken it out on Asher’s Ferrari. I didn’t want to think about where that anger would have been directed if they’d been someplace private. “Yeah. They got in a fight and things got out of hand. The car can be fixed and nobody got hurt, thank God.”

“Did they break up?” She made a face. “I’d break up with someone if he was that much of a jerk.”

The kids both looked at me, challenging expressions in their eyes.

That’s what a jerk looks like, Dad. Not Marcus.

“I’m pretty sure they broke up, yes.” I kept my voice neutral. “I was just there to defuse things.”

“Glad he got rid of him if he was such a dick,” Claire said.

“Yeah, me too.” I speared a piece of chicken. “So how are things at school?”

They exchanged you go first, no you go first looks.

David stared at his food and dragged a carrot through some soy sauce. “School just started.” He shrugged. “I dunno.”

I turned to Claire. “What about you?”

“Same.”

Conversation continued in that vein throughout dinner. Six months ago, they’d have had monosyllabic answers too—they were teenagers, after all—but there wouldn’t have been the undercurrent of, “Damn it, Dad, I don’t want to talk to you until you take Marcus back.” More than once throughout the long, chilly meal, I reminded myself that I would never forgive Marcus for this part. He’d made sure that if I ever left him, my kids would be devastated and furious with me. He’d thought that threat would be enough to make me stay, and for a while, he’d been right. Sometimes I still caught myself wondering if leaving him had been worth it when this was what it did to my relationship with my kids.