“We should be with Mom.”
“We were,” Jeremy said. “And now we’ll be with Dad tonight.”
I shook my head. “That’s wrong and you know it.”
“What’s wrong is the way you’re treating Dad. When are you going to grow up?”
“The way I’m treating Dad? Me? What the hell is wrong with you? Mom is in that house all alone right now, and Dad—”
“And Dad is alone all the time. Why don’t you care about that?”
I forced my head to turn to the window before I did something stupid like punch my brother while we were going fifty miles per hour. Maybe when we slowed down.
“You need to ease up on Dad. He’s not doing real well. You’d know that if you spent any time with him.”
“Who do you think helped him with the lights, huh?”
“Yeah, and then you didn’t say a word to him all Sunday.”
“If he hadn’t left, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Jeremy shook his head. “You keep doing that. Think about what it’s like for him. What it’s been like since Greg died. She can’t let go.”
“She’s supposed to let go when we keep leaving her alone like this?”
“I don’t know. But it wasn’t Dad’s idea to leave.”
“It wasn’t Mom’s.”
“No, it was both of them. They decided together. However mad you are at him for leaving, you better be just as mad at her.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. None of it made sense to me, but Dad leaving, even if he was agreeing with Mom, was wrong. It was so obvious after these past few months that she wasn’t coping with Dad being gone. She was crumbling before our eyes each time Jeremy and I left. If Dad was any kind of man, he’d have seen that. Jeremy knew it as well as I did.
“Dad’s alone because he’s a coward. Mom’s alone because she married one.”
I wanted to feel satisfied when Jeremy didn’t have a response, but I wasn’t.
Jolene
I couldn’t tell you how long I spent waiting for Adam in the lobby, but it was full dark outside—and not from the weather—when I finally saw his brother’s car. I was aware of how pathetic I looked, waiting there for him, but I didn’t care enough to pretend that I’d been doing anything besides waiting. For him.
I had cause to rethink my so-called indifference when Jeremy entered the lobby first. He took one look at me, scowled while muttering something under his breath, and stormed toward the stairs. The two-second encounter made my skin feel like it didn’t fit. But then Adam was there.
He wore a scowl identical to his brother’s until he saw me. He stopped halfway inside the building and took a deep breath without taking his eyes from me. Then he dropped his bag to the floor and crossed the lobby in three long strides, sending my heart pounding.
His arms went around me, and my feet were lifted from the ground as his face was buried in my shoulder. If he noticed how I stiffened when he embraced me, he didn’t show it. “I really needed you to be here, right here. I wouldn’t have made it another step. How’d you know that?”
Adam was still wrapped around me, almost too tightly. He smelled really good, like spicy apples, and my whole body finally sighed into him. “I was actually just down here getting the mail.”
He laughed into my shoulder, and his breath stirred the baby hairs at the nape of my neck, making me tingle. With one last squeeze, Adam released me.
“Easy, Adam. You know, I think you cracked my rib just now,” I said, lightly running my fingers along my side.
“Nah, you’re just not used to it.”
Something prickled behind my eyes, but I ignored it and went to retrieve Adam’s bag. I felt his gaze on me the entire time.
“Sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.”
“Trouble in paradise, I take it?” I nodded in the direction Jeremy had gone. We could still hear him stomping up the stairs. “And call me nutty, but I think your brother is falling in love with me.”
“It’s not you,” Adam said, dodging the lighthearted life preserver I’d thrown him and focusing on the empty staircase. “He thinks I should be spending time with our dad.”
“I already knew you were Team Mom in the split.”
“There shouldn’t have been a split.” One of his eyelids started to twitch. “If Dad had stayed instead of leaving when Mom needed him, we wouldn’t be here. We’d be home together, missing him together.”
Oh.
I mean, not oh, I totally get what’s going on, but one big piece just got added to the mix. No wonder Adam had gotten so upset when I’d implied one or both of his parents had cheated. They’d lost someone.
“Who?”
“My older brother. Greg.”
He did that guy thing where he locked his jaw tight enough to crack and tried to keep his eyes from doing more than looking extra shiny. I should have touched him or said something—that was what people did when someone revealed something like that, right? But patting his back or saying I was sorry felt woefully inadequate.
“Recently?”
Adam hunched, and his hand moved from his jacket pocket toward the phone I could see in his jeans. “Yeah. I mean no.” His fingers flexed like he was forcing himself not to touch his phone. He shoved his hand back in his jacket. “It was a couple years ago, but I don’t really want to—”
“You don’t have to. I’m just—I’m sorry. That sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.”
His gaze grew distant—more distant—and I could tell he didn’t like any of the places his thoughts were taking him, so I changed the subject.
Gazing outside, I said, “Do you ever feel like the earth hates us? I mean, look at that.” That was the snowstorm currently obliterating the view, such as it was. It was gray and screaming and completely impenetrable. “How do you interpret that as anything other than deeply held hatred?”
“I am feeling strongly disliked at the moment,” he told me. “But that might have more to do with the hour I just spent with Jeremy.” He looked at me. “Shelly pick you up today?”
I made a face. “Yes. She didn’t get out of the car, and I ran out the second she pulled up. It wasn’t too bad.” Though that was largely due to the fact that I’d hidden Mom’s watch and phone and changed all the clocks in the house back an hour before she had gotten up, so she’d been caught unaware when I ran out.