“He’s out of line,” I said.
“He’s not a perv or anything,” she said. “A douche, yes, but a perv, no. Mom and Evan even kind of agreed with him.”
“Evan?”
Now I was really getting steamed. Evan was Bob’s nineteen-year-old son. He had been living most of the time with his mother, Bob’s ex-wife, but now she was off to Europe for three months, so Evan had moved in with his dad. This meant he was now sleeping down the hall from Syd, who, by the way, liked her new bedroom very much and had pointed out several times that it was twice the size of the one she had in my house.
We’d had a bigger house, once.
The idea of some horny teenage boy living under the same roof with Syd had pissed me off from the get-go. I was surprised Susanne was going along with it, but once you moved out of your own house and into someone else’s, you lost a bit of leverage. What could she do? Make her boyfriend kick his own son out?
“Yeah, Evan,” Sydney said. “He was just commenting, is all.”
“He shouldn’t even be living there.”
“Jesus, Dad, do we have to get into this again?”
“A boy, a nineteen-year-old boy, unless he’s your actual brother, shouldn’t be living with you.”
I thought I saw her cheeks flush. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Your mother’s cool with this? Bob and his boy telling you to be the next Cindy Crawford?”
“Cindy who?”
“Crawford,” I said. “She was—never mind. Your mom’s okay with this?”
“She’s not having a shit fit like you,” Syd said, shooting me a look. “And besides, Evan’s helping her since the thing.”
The thing. Susanne’s parasailing accident in Long Island Sound. Came down too fast, did something to her hip, twisted her knee out of shape. Bob, behind the wheel of his boat, dragged her a hundred yards before he knew something was wrong, the dumb fuck. Susanne didn’t have to worry about parasailing accidents when she was with me. I didn’t have a boat.
“You never said what you paid for the shades,” I said.
Sydney sighed. “It wasn’t that much.” She was looking at several unopened envelopes by the phone. “You should really open your bills, Dad. They’ve been there like three days.”
“Don’t you worry about the bills. I can pay the bills.”
“Mom says it’s not that you don’t have the money to pay them, you just aren’t very organized, so then you’re late—”
“The sunglasses. Where’d you get them?”
“Jesus, what’s the deal about a pair of sunglasses?”
“I’m just curious, is all,” I said. “Get them at the mall?”
“Yeah, I got them at the mall. Fifty percent off.”
“Did you save your receipt? In case they break or something?”
Her eyes bored into me. “Why don’t you just ask me to show you the receipt?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you think I stole them.”
“I never said that.”
“It was two years ago, Dad. I don’t believe you.” She pushed her eggs away, unfinished.
“You come down here in Versace sunglasses, you think I’m not going to ask questions?”
She got up and stomped back upstairs.
“Shit,” I said under my breath. Nicely played.
I had to finish getting ready to go to work myself, and heard her run down the stairs while I was in my bedroom. I caught her coming out of the kitchen with a bottled water as I came down to say goodbye before she headed out to the Civic.
“Being with you for the summer is going to suck if you’re going to be like this all the time,” she said. “And it’s not my fault I’m living with Evan.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“I gotta go,” she said, walking away and getting into her car. She had her eyes fixed on the road as she drove away, and didn’t see me wave.
In the kitchen was the receipt for the sunglasses, right next to the eggshell character she’d flattened with her fist.
I GOT INTO MY CR-V and headed to Riverside Honda. We were just this side of the bridge that crosses over into Stratford, where the Housatonic empties into the Sound. It was a slow morning, not enough people dropping in for my turn to come up in the rotation, but shortly after noon a retired couple in their late sixties dropped by to look at a base model four-door Accord.