Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1)(91)

“Topher.” My aunt gave me a repressive look that I probably deserved, though she, too, seemed appalled by Colleen’s insinuation. “Can we all try to get along?”

“It was from me.” Jace quivered with outrage as he stared Colleen down. “I’m a painter, and sometimes my art sells in galleries. Topher did some modeling work for me this summer and I decided to share the profits from the paintings I sold to help pay for his education.”

I flinched at the emphasis. The anger in Jace’s voice was hot enough to blister. Colleen wasn’t the only one who should locate the burn unit. Ooh, was I ever going to hear about this.

“Well, thank you, Jace,” my uncle said quite courteously. The education bit at the end there had just earned him major credits with them. Aunt Blythe and Uncle Pete were the first high school and college graduates from their respective families, and, not coincidentally, the first ones to move out of the lower-class income brackets all the way to upper-middle class. They were big, big believers in higher education. Ironically, it was the one subject I was actually in perfect agreement with them on.

My aunt scribbled a check and pushed it at me. I didn’t dare hesitate to grab it, because I was pretty sure Jace would lose his shit if I dug in my heels about this.

“Okay. Let’s all go get some dinner and talk about this,” Aunt Blythe said as I tucked the check in my wallet. “We’ll figure out a solution that works for the whole family.”

“We’d love to.” Jace grabbed my arm, holding tight, his voice bright with false cheer.

What else could I do but smile gamely? “Sure.”



“Your aunt and uncle aren’t what I expected,” Jace said mildly as we searched for a decent hotel near the hospital. Once we were checked in, we’d be going back, because that was what my family did. When someone was in the hospital, we sat vigils.

After Aunt Blythe and Uncle Pete had treated us to a late dinner at their favorite Coney Island family restaurant, Colleen had gone home. My aunt and uncle went back to the hospital to check on Mom one more time before undertaking the two-hour drive back to Grand Rapids, so that they could be up for work in the morning. Before they left, we’d tentatively agreed that, if necessary, we would all pitch in—each as allowed by our respective incomes—to hire a nurse or aide if Mom needed one when she was out of the hospital. I was betting Colleen wouldn’t have a dime to spare for the endeavor, though I was already mentally rearranging finances to stretch my degree out a little longer to be able to contribute.

While my attempting to pay for the whole thing myself hadn’t accomplished what I’d intended, just the gesture might have done me one better. There had been something different in the way my aunt and uncle had spoken to me over dinner, as though they were conferring with me instead of dictating to me. By attempting to pay for the nurse, I’d moved myself into a different classification in their eyes. I’d demonstrated that I was self-sufficient. I was no longer a dependent, an unproductive drain on family resources like my mom and even sometimes Colleen. I was an adult, and someone who took his obligations to family seriously. It made them treat me with a new respect, and that respect was extended to Jace because obviously he, too, was a responsible and contributing citizen.

It was a little sad that in my family, you had to flash some cash before you could be regarded as an equal, but whatever. I’d take it.

“How’s that?” I asked Jace, already knowing what he would say about Aunt Blythe and Uncle Pete.

“They’re so . . . nice.” He looked at me in confusion. “Soft-spoken. Polite. I would have expected them to be a lot more . . . I don’t know . . . rigid? Cold? Disapproving? . . . given what you’ve told me about them.”

I nodded slowly. “If I met your family—and they didn’t know I was gay and/or your boyfriend—what do you think I would see? Would they seem like monsters, or would they seem like normal, even nice, people?”

His mouth tightened. “Okay. Point taken.”

“Sometimes when I remember the way they’ve treated me, it’s hard for me to be objective, but really, no one’s all good or all bad. Well, my sister sometimes challenges that idea, but even she can be fun when she’s not being a raging bitch. My aunt and uncle are downright wonderful people about ninety-five percent of the time. That ninety-five percent makes it really hard for people on the outside to believe in the other five percent—the part you only see when you’re living under their roof, under their authority. But that five percent can be pretty harsh.”

He sighed and slipped his fingers through mine as we waited for the light to change. “Yeah, I can see that.”

We fell silent for a moment, then he asked softly, “Why did you do it, Topher? What the f*ck were you thinking?”

“It’s family.” I shrugged helplessly, tracing a finger in random patterns through the thin layer of oily haze that always seems to exist on the inside of car windows. “They make you crazy. They pull you in. No matter how much you hate them sometimes, you still go to Christmas dinner and try to love them. And there’s always a part of you that tries to take care of them.” I sighed, bowing my head. “My family has just enough redeeming qualities to make it really, really hard to cut myself off from them entirely, no matter how much they’ve f*cked me up. Sometimes I want to, but if I tried, I’d feel like the bad guy. And Colleen pissed me off enough today that I thought, if they took that money, I could finally do it. I could finally convince myself there was nothing in this family worth sticking around for. I could cut the last ties and maybe ditch some of the baggage that comes with them.”