Uh-oh. “I never said a week, Amory. What did you get ready?”
Silence.
And silence when it came to Amory was never a good thing. “Am? Talk to me.”
“No! You don’t love me, either!”
And then she hung up.
He tried calling her back, but she didn’t answer. He left her a text and an e-mail.
More nothing.
Shit. For anyone other than his sister, he might’ve just given it a few days and tried again. But this was Amory, and though her moods were pure and one hundred percent genuine, they were also mercurial. He stared at his phone for a while, trying to talk himself into letting it go. But the last time he’d let it go, she’d run away from home and managed to get herself on a bus to D.C. to come see him, where she’d gotten herself mugged.
Shit.
He called his dad. His dad was usually more reasonable than his mom.
“Son,” his dad answered. “Been a long time.”
Two months. Parker had called on his mom’s birthday and caught them in the middle of dinner with friends. It had been a good call as far as these things went mostly because with their friends listening, neither his mom nor dad had wanted to reveal any rift. “Dad. How are you? How’s Mom?”
“She’s right here, son. I’ve got you on speaker.”
Parker grimaced. “Great,” he lied. “Hi, Mom.”
“Did you know?” his mom asked. “Did you know what Amory was up to?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “That depends on what she’s up to. She just told me she’d had something planned for when I came but I’m not able to leave right now—”
“Right, so now she’s decided to go see you.”
Damn. “No,” he said. “I was just talking to her and—”
“Parker, how could you?” his mom asked. “She can’t travel on her own, you know that, and yet you persist in putting these crazy ideas in her head. After last time—” She broke off and started to cry.
Parker closed his eyes. “Mom—”
“We’re going to have to get a court-ordered conservatorship to protect her now that she’s a legal adult,” she said tearfully. “We didn’t think we’d need one, but now with you tempting her at every turn to do the wrong thing . . .”
“It’s not the wrong thing for her to want to get out and see and experience new things,” Parker said.
“No,” his dad said. “It’s not, of course it’s not. But you’re the one who wants these things, not her.”
Parker pinched the bridge of his nose. This was a very old argument. “Dad—”
“No, Parker, you don’t understand,” his mom said. “You never have because you think what you want is what everyone should want. But everyone’s different, Parker. And Amory happens to be very different. She’s happy here and you need to see that and stop trying to make waves. It makes her anxious to think she disappoints you. So now she’s determined to make you happy. And we’ve all seen what a determined Amory can do.”
Parker inhaled a deep breath. “Mom, that was three years ago, and we both know that the whole D.C. thing could’ve been avoided if you’d let her off the leash once in a while. With some supervision and practice, she’d have the experience to travel more—”
“She was mugged, Parker,” his dad said. “Mugged on the street waiting for the bus. What is this world coming to when a handicapped little girl can’t even be safe in broad daylight?”
“She’s not a little girl anymore,” Parker said. And actually, Amory had been mugged while showing a perfect stranger the picture of him in her wallet, which she’d held open, revealing the wad of cash she’d “borrowed” from their parents. “She needs experience handling herself in the real world,” Parker said. “She can do this, she just needs some help. I could—”