He’d need someone, and if he let me, I was going to be there for him.
“Left on Lorraine.” I leaned over the front seat. Fabian insisted I sit in the back because it was procedure, but I was jumping out of my skin. “Hard right onto Wilshire and left onto Irving.”
I’d have to guide him back to Wilshire to get to the church, but I had a few more crazy turns planned just for kicks.
When he turned onto Lorraine, I pretended I wasn’t looking onto the right side of the street, but at the last minute I did. It was just after dinnertime. I expected to see the car in the lot and the lights on.
Instead of lights and life, the windows were dark, and in front of Carter’s beautiful Craftsman sat a FOR SALE sign.
My heart wrung itself into a ball and lodged in my throat.
CHAPTER 53
CARTER
I took him to his favorite strip-mall Thai place. It had a Buddhist shrine in the front with bowls of fresh fruit and flowers and faded photos of specialty dishes that curled at the edges. We couldn’t pronounce the name of it, and most of the menu was in Thai, but we had things we ordered every time. I wanted something . . . anything to be the way it was before he knew I wasn’t his father.
Over the past twenty-four hours, Phin had started waking up. He ate a little. Went to the bathroom. He spoke in a full sentence while looking at the Thai menu, which was a relief, except that I had to answer his question.
“Where are we going?”
“After dinner?”
“When you sell the house.”
“I was thinking Northern California. There’s a lot of tech up there.”
“Is Grandma coming with us?”
“She’s getting her own place here.”
“Can I stay with her?”
The waiter came to take our order before I could react as strongly as I felt.
“I’ll have the chicken basil and a Thai iced tea, and he’ll have a pad Thai with—”
“I want the crying tiger.” Phin folded up his menu.
“That’s very spicy,” the waiter said.
“Make it mild,” I interjected.
“I’ll take it spicy.” Phin picked up my menu and gave both to the waiter. “And a Thai iced tea too.”
The waiter bowed and left.
“There’s caffeine in that tea. You’ll be up all night.”
“I’ve been sleeping for two days, Da—”
He cut himself off before finishing the word. I folded my hands on the table and tapped my thumbs together. He pressed his chopsticks in the paper napkin until they made crescent-shaped dents.
“I don’t know what to call you.”
“What do you want to call me?” It wasn’t like me to give him that kind of power in the relationship. I made the rules. I was the parent. But without the armor of my lies, I didn’t know how to maintain my authority.
“Jerk.” He said it matter-of-factly, without reprimand or venom, but I was filled with a blood-saturated rage and snapped his chopsticks away.
“Do not dare,” I growled.
He wouldn’t look at me. Without chopsticks, he used his fingernails to emboss crescents in the napkin.
“Fine.” He pushed the napkin toward me, and I picked it up. Even as I was about to make a scene in a Thai restaurant, I loathed how I was behaving. My anger was disgusting to me but undeniable.
A waitress passed by with a tray of lemongrass and basil, and I was reminded of Emily. Her life in a fortress. Her beautiful smile. Her vulnerability with a red X on her chest. Everything came to me in a flood, and I saw myself and my anger through her eyes. How would she react to my behavior?
“I’m sorry.” I took his forearm across the table. I wanted it to be a stabilizing force between us. I wanted to transmit my love for him with a squeeze to the arm. “This is hard.”
“I don’t want to go,” he said. “Please don’t make me go.”
“Everyone’s going to be talking about it.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will.”
“Maybe. But if we run away, I’m going to make all new friends, and what am I going to tell them? At least everyone here knows me and I only have to explain, like, half of it. Or none, maybe. And I’ll be the center of attention for a little while, but it’s going to go away. No one gets attention for that long. When Glen Crouch and Frida Langston got divorced, everyone felt sorry for Indigo for, like, a week. Ten days, tops. Then it was like, whatever. No one cared.”
I’d decided a long time ago that Phin wouldn’t run the show. Major decisions about his life would go to the adults in the room. Yet he’d brought something to my attention. As I started to let the idea of staying enter my mind, I saw where my resistance was coming from.
“You always said not to worry what other people think.” He was stuffing more words into ten minutes than he had in the last two days. “And here you are worrying what other people think.”
“It’s not about what other people think.” Untrue. When did I become such a liar? I was the one who didn’t want to make explanations for what I’d done. If we stayed, things were going to change, and his school, his friends, the people in my life, would all want to know why I’d made this boy’s life a lie. “It’s about . . .”
. . . protecting you.
It wasn’t. Protection was my default. My core motivation. Without it, why did I do anything?
What is it about, Carter Kincaid?
What are you running from?
Phin continued as if he didn’t need to hear the rest of the sentence because he knew damn well what it was about. It had been about protecting him, up until it wasn’t. Now it was about protecting me.
“And what about that girl you like?” Phin continued like a used-car salesman trying to close on a clunker. “Emily? She seemed really nice. You’re just going to leave her behind?”
“Stay out of my love life, kid.”
“You seemed really happy. I never saw you hold hands with anyone.”
“Hey now . . .”
“I’m just saying. Look. Here’s the thing. I’m really mad at you. Like, really mad. But I want you to be happy anyway.”
“So you want to stay for my own good?”
“Well, partly. I guess? I don’t know.” He looked lost. He was thirteen. What else was I going to dump on him?
Our food came. I handed him back his chopsticks and napkin.
“I’m a jerk,” I mumbled.
“Yeah.”
“You may never forgive me.” I waited for word of his forgiveness but didn’t get any. He shrugged and poked at the chili-crusted beef, letting me continue. “I only ever wanted to take care of you. I know that’s not an excuse. But whatever you decide to call me, Uncle or Dad or Carter . . . I want you to know something really important.”
“I know you love me.” Phin kept his eyes glued to the plate and put a piece of meat between his teeth and chewed.