“Rip that sucker off.”
I lifted off the bed and crossed the room toward him. When I passed by, I felt like I was passing through an energy field. Like the electricity in the air was especially concentrated around him. That wasn’t something new when it came to Boone, but it was something I’d hoped would have been decommissioned after all of this time. After all of the baggage that came with the story of us.
When I stepped into the hall, I almost felt my walls lifting back into place. My body armor fit snugly around me, secured so there were no weak spots a sharp thing could penetrate. It came naturally. I’d learned long ago that the only way to survive in this family was to protect myself, invisible walls and armor included.
“Let me do the talking when it comes to us,” I whispered to Boone, who’d shouldered up beside me and wasn’t scanning the area like he was just waiting for some family member to pop out of one of those dozen doors and fire off one belittling comment after another.
His head shook. “Yeah, when I followed that advice from you last time, your parents called the cops, thinking I was some half-naked miscreant in your bedroom, about to defile their daughter. Instead of believing the ‘alleged’ miscreant was dear daughter’s boyfriend who she’d just been defiling.” He gave me a nudge with his elbow, his grin as wicked as they came. “For the second time that morning.”
“You weren’t so eager to divulge what we’d been up to that morning either, so why don’t you turn that tsk-tsk tone on yourself for a change?” I scooted away from him, giving myself some space.
We were almost down the stairs and heading into the breakfast dining room—because the Abbott family had been eating their breakfasts in a separate room than their dinners for five generations—when Boone’s forehead creased. “It’s too quiet down here. Are you sure they weren’t going out to breakfast or something?”
Now that I was paying attention, I realized I didn’t hear anything either, which was unusual. Usually my dad’s booming Southern voice could be heard from a few rooms back, or my mom trying to get my dad’s attention by firing off question after question about whose dinner invite they should accept for the weekend, and Avalee and Charlotte could almost always be heard bickering about something. This morning though, when I knew at least a dozen extra bodies were living under this roof, I couldn’t make out the sound of a spoon scraping against a bowl.
“No, I’m not sure. Since Charlotte was the bearer of the breakfast news, this could be some kind of booby trap.” I craned my neck to look into the living room to see if anyone was in there. Like the rest of the house, it was empty.
“Or maybe Reverend Martin finally got it right and Armageddon arrived and took away all of the bad eggs,” Boone said, checking the kitchen to find it just as empty.
The thought made me laugh. “Free at last. Thank God Almighty, and Armageddon, I’m free at last.”
Boone and I were both still laughing as we rounded into the silent dining room. The breakfast dining room. Our laughs cut off mid-note.
“I don’t know about bad eggs, but if they’re not cold already from waiting on you two, they’re about to be.”
Boone cleared his throat while I slid a bit in his direction. There was a cold front directly ahead, whereas he’d always given off a warmth that bordered on sunshine.
The room had been silent before. It somehow became even more so.
At the head of the long table was my dad, untouched by age and unsoftened by experience, if his expression could be trusted. Where I was used to seeing three of the two dozen chairs staggered around the table filled, this morning, every one save for one was filled. Some faces I recognized; most I didn’t.
All clearly knew who I was though. Just as clearly as they knew who Boone was. No, that wasn’t the right way to put it . . . more likely, they knew of Boone.
Not the version I’d grown up knowing or even the one he truly was.
“Daddy,” I said at last, trying on a smile because the situation warranted it. Seeing one’s dad for the first time in over two years generally did . . . right? “I’m sorry I missed you last night. It’s good to see you again.”
“Yes, well, if someone would have arrived when we were expecting her, you wouldn’t need to make an apology in front of everyone at the breakfast table, would you?” My dad’s voice filled the room, bouncing off the walls and filling the empty spaces. He wasn’t what I would call a hard man, just an unbending one. He knew what he knew, and what he knew was the truth. No exceptions.
That left anyone looking to have a relationship with him the person who’d have to make so many justifications and conditions until they broke. The only way to love an unbending person was to break yourself.
It was what I’d done with my father.
It was what I was hell-bent not to do again.
“Your mother had the good grace to tell me who your date was for the wedding. The same good grace you might have exercised so we had a bit of a . . .” My dad’s eyes finally landed on Boone. If looks could commit murder, my dad had just earned himself a life sentence. “Warning as to what was coming.”
“Don’t you mean who was coming?” I said in a tone that got closer to snapping than saying.
My dad’s gaze cut back to me, his silver brow lifting in a way that suggested he’d made no error.
Boone moved a bit closer to me, holding his head so high it looked unnatural. “I bet you never thought you’d see my face around here again,” he said, managing to project in the same manner my dad had mastered.
Dad settled back into his chair, lifting the newspaper in front of his face. “More like hoped I never would,” he said, as though he were speaking to himself. “But like my daddy always used to say, hoping is worth its weight in shit.”
My eyebrows drove into my forehead. My dad was of the South, for the South, and the essence of the South, which meant he followed a certain code of conduct that was exclusive to this part of the world. Part of that code included never cursing in front of the “gentler” gender and making up for those periods of abstinence by cursing it up with the rest of the Neanderthals who considered themselves the very pinnacle of human-dom. That he’d just dropped a shit bomb in front of a roomful of women meant my dad wasn’t feeling like himself. Either that, or he’d been possessed by a guy who’d spent a lifetime in a trailer park outside of Detroit.
“Why don’t you take a seat so we don’t starve our guests away?” Dad shook his paper open but couldn’t seem to distract himself from Boone and me hovering inside the room.
“There’s only one chair left.” I waved my finger between Boone and myself. “And there are two of us.”
Dad lifted his brow again, an expression of So? settling onto his face.
To my dad’s left, Ford covered his mouth as a laugh erupted from him. Everyone was still staring at us, and no one was taking the initiative to make the introductions, so I continued to stand there, accepting the gaping and snickers and invisible question marks hanging above everyone’s head. Waiting.
I’d spent half of my life waiting. Waiting for something that had never come to life. Waiting for something I couldn’t designate with a name even.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Boone said, his voice drawing out the term of endearment longer than necessary. “You can sit on my lap. Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve eaten breakfast like that.”
When I looked at him smiling down at me like everything was coming up roses, I found my eyes starting to narrow. I caught myself before anyone else seemed to notice.
I was just about to plaster on a smile and say something along the lines of, “Not when there’s company around” when my mom shot out of her seat.
“Now there’s absolutely no need for anyone to be left without a chair when we’ve got a whole storage room packed with them.” Mom lifted her eyebrows at one of the kitchen employees hovering in the corner of the room, then she plastered on a smile of her own. “I must have miscounted when I gave Frieda the number f
or breakfast.”
“You must have,” Boone replied, his smile more convincing than my mom’s, though I knew what he was saying between the lines. You didn’t miscount anything, lady. You simply chose not to count me.
“How did everyone sleep?” Dad gave up on his paper and dropped it into a crumpled heap on the edge of the table. He couldn’t stop watching Boone and me.
A chorus of “good” and “well, thank you” swept around the table. The new chair was just being nestled in beside the other empty chair. Frieda rushed back into the kitchen to grab another place setting, and Boone took my hand and walked me over to our chairs. My dad’s eyes lowered to where Boone held my hand. If you could kill the same person twice, my dad had just earned himself another life sentence.
“I don’t know if you want to call it sleep, per se,” Boone said, firing off a wink around the table before continuing, “but I had one hell of a night if you know what I mean.”
My mouth wasn’t the only one that fell open. My mom’s, along with a few others, followed my lead, while Dad and Ford went with something more along the lines of curling their lips while reaching for their butter knifes. As Boone slid out my chair for me, I gave him a subtle nudge before sitting. One that suggested he shut the hell up unless he wanted me to stab him in the knee with my fork if he made any more comments of that nature.
Frieda raced back into the room and set up Boone’s place setting in less time than it took me to unfold my napkin and smooth it into my lap.
Breakfast was a formal affair at Abbott Manor, as most everything was. We ate our eggs with cloth napkins, drank our coffee from porcelain cups painted with gold leaf, and sipped our pressed-fresh-every-morning orange juice from imported Italian crystal. While the breakfast centerpieces were typically extravagant, from the three floral pieces lining the center of the table, I guessed my parents had had every floral shop from Charleston to Raleigh on round-the-clock mode.
“Estelle tells me you’re unemployed, Boone.” Now that we were seated, my dad sawed into his ham steak, though I couldn’t help feeling like it was Boone’s neck he was envisioning. He cut into it a bit more eagerly than breakfast ham warranted.
Boone took a sip of his orange juice, ignoring the heads turned his way. “Estelle speaks the truth.”
“Is this something new?” Dad asked, before lifting a piece of ham to his mouth.
I reached for my own glass of juice. Breakfast hadn’t even started, and I was already counting down the bites until it was over.
“My business just went under.” Boone took another drink, draining his glass. When he was done, he slammed his glass on the table like he was in some gunslinger bar and that was the way one asked for another drink. “So yeah, new within the past few weeks.”
My eyebrows came together as I processed what he’d just said. I hadn’t known anything about Boone owning his own business or what that business might have been. I hadn’t known that had been on his radar even. The fact that it had gone under so recently gave me fresh insight into why he’d so quickly taken the deal I offered him.
Desperation: what makes the world go round.
“What kind of business was that?” The forkful of ham stayed frozen in the air as my dad continued his interrogation.
When Frieda came up behind Boone after giving me a side of ham and poached eggs, she waited. Boone glanced back when he noticed her, his forehead lining.
“Your napkin, Cavanaugh,” Ford piped up. “It goes in your lap. It’s not used for wiping your ass like I know you were thinking.”
Beside him, Charlotte snickered, and across the table, Mr. McBride, who looked to have packed on fifty pounds in seven years and run his liver into the ground judging from the pale brown spots dotting his arms and face, popped off a single-noted laugh.
“Please, everyone. We’re at the breakfast table, and we’ve got a whole tableful of guests.” Mom patted the air with her hands, addressing the room like the debutante she’d been. “Now, Boone, you were telling us about the little business you started up . . .” Her hand flicked in his direction, giving him the floor.
I fought the urge to correct her for applying the word “little” to both Boone’s and my business ventures. In Freudian terms, that pretty much meant my mom thought we were a couple of fools to think we could or should think big enough to venture into the business world. She’d never understand, because to understand, a person needed to be wired with the understanding code.
She wasn’t.
Pinching his napkin, Boone simply moved it from his plate to the side of it. He didn’t put it in his lap, where it so-called belonged. In his own way, a way that wouldn’t earn him a reprimand from my mom, Boone was giving the finger to Ford. “I started a non-profit kids’ rec center.”
Guests in the process of eating their breakfasts stopped chewing. I’d been about to dive into my thick slice of buttered toast when I turned my attention elsewhere. A kids’ center? A non-profit? Come again?
“What’s that?” Dad pressed, his mustache curling higher from his half-smile. “Like a daycare?”
Again, Ford choked on a laugh, though this time he didn’t seem to care about trying to hide it.
Boone grabbed his fork and cut into one of his eggs. My dad wasn’t the only one venting his emotions on the breakfast food.
“No, kids could come and go as they wanted,” Boone explained around a mouthful of egg, “but it gave the growing number of kids in our community who are being raised in unstable-to-volatile homes a soft spot to land for a few hours. A place where they could just be kids and get warm meals.” He finished with a shrug and stuffed the other half of his egg into his mouth.
No one had anything to say, not even my dad or the laughing hyena Ford. I didn’t even know what to say, because I couldn’t figure out how to think about what Boone had just said. He’d owned and run a charitable program for the underprivileged kids in the community? He gave them a safe place to play and a reliable place to eat a hot meal? He had the vision to start something like that, the knowledge to see it through to completion, and the composure to explain it to a roomful of judgmental strangers, even after that business had crumbled?
Who was the person sitting beside me? What had happened to the one who had turned his back and left me when I’d needed him most? How did that kind of a person go on to build a business that revolved around supporting others and being there when others weren’t?
It seemed Boone and I had more to get straight than just our fake story of how we’d reunited after all of these years.
“I take it this non-profit paid you a salary.’” Ford leaned forward in his seat, innocence pasted onto his face. Ford was so many things, and none of them included innocence.
Beside me, Boone blew out a slow breath. “Yeah, it did, and before you go and assume I was corruptly drawing six figures a year from it, my salary was twenty-four thousand.” The internal gasps from the majority of guests lining the table was so loud, it almost made me jump in my seat. “It’s a matter of public record. You know, just in case you don’t believe me and want to double-check.”
Ford exchanged a look with my dad. From the looks of it, those two were still each other’s second-biggest fans—next to themselves.
“Oh no, Boone, it’s clear from those boots you’re still tromping around in that you were making less than the poverty line.” Ford’s dimple set into his cheek as he fought to suppress a smile when Charlotte laughed. “My question had more to do with why in the hell a man would open a business and welcome all the headaches that come along with that if he knew he would be making less than 25K. I mean, it’s an okay weekly sort of salary, but I thought there were labor laws protecting people from that kind of atrocious annual income.”
Of all the bodies at the table, only Avalee and myself were giving Ford an appalled sort of look. Probably because most of the people around the table were his family and friends . . . actually, I think just as many were members of my own family, albeit distant on
es I hadn’t seen in years and couldn’t name if someone dangled a one-way ticket home leaving in an hour in front of my face.
Boone continued to work at his breakfast though, half of it already shoveled into his mouth. “Because maybe my kind of reasons behind doing things are entirely different than your reasons.” When he returned Ford’s stare, there was fire in Boone’s eyes. Fire was another word for contempt. “I could explain it, but you wouldn’t understand.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes as she continued picking at her eggs, stabbing at them until the yolk burst and pooled in the center of her plate. Knowing Charlotte, she was probably trying to lose another ten pounds before the wedding. She wore a size 25 in jeans and had been underweight by medical standards her whole life, but if you asked her, there’d never been a time when she couldn’t stand to lose ten pounds.
Me on the other hand? According to the devil—also known as the BMI chart—I was a perfectly average weight for my height, but according to my mom, my size eight was about four sizes too big. Being a non-underweight teen girl in this household had been hell. Even now, my mom couldn’t help eyeing my piece of toast every time I lifted it to my mouth. You know, since carbs were the enemy.
“Speaking of business ventures, what’s this I hear about your company expanding, Clara Belle?” Dad lifted his coffee cup in Frieda’s direction, irritation set into his brow. Frieda bustled over with the coffee pot like the lives of an entire continent were in her hands. “Making its way down into the belly of the country here? Are my sources correct?”
All heads turned in my direction. All of them save for Ford’s, who stayed focused on his plate as he cut into his ham like he was performing surgery.
“The business is thriving. Sales are soaring,” I said, feeling like I was explaining it to the whole table. “My goal wasn’t to just keep to California if this worked; it was to expand nationally. I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly.”
Boone set down his fork and angled in his seat toward me. “What kind of business, Clara?”