Bill gives a jerk of his head—No!—before letting his chin drop to his chest. There’s worry in the hunch of his shoulders, helplessness in his slackening fists.
“Okay,” Dad says. “Okay.” I feel marginally better as I watch him make eye contact with the Holden girls: Zoe, who’s pulled Oliver onto her lap, and Ivy, whose quivering lip makes my throat tighten.
“I’m grateful to you for bringing him home, Officer Tate,” Marcy says. “Bill will be, too. We’ll talk to him. We’ll be sure nothing like this happens again.”
The front door slams. A moment later, Max storms into the kitchen, followed closely by his mother. “I was fine to drive!” he shouts, whipping around to face her. “I had a couple of beers at Becky’s. That’s it!”
“You had a case in your truck! You’re seventeen! I cannot believe, after everything we’ve been through this year, that you would climb behind the wheel of that truck half-drunk!”
Max yanks at the collar of his sweatshirt as if it’s choking him. “Tate’s a pompous ass. He had no reason to pull me over.”
Marcy grasps the gold cross hanging from her neck. “He said you rolled through a stop sign! Thank goodness there were no other cars around. Thank goodness it was him who stopped you. Thank goodness he chose to pour the beer out. You heard what he said: You could have ended up in jail!”
“Oh, Jesus,” Max says, snotty and sluggish. “Let’s not blow a little beer out of proportion.”
It’s disgusting, the way he’s acting. I so want to wake him up to how he’s hurting his mother and devastating his father, but I’m frozen in my seat, a lot like Bill. I steal a glance at my dad; he’s glaring at Max, mouth set in a grim line. He catches my eye. I told you, his stare boasts.
“Out of proportion?” Marcy says. She points to the table where we sit, family and friends present to witness the train wreck Max’s life is becoming. “We have company. Company I had to abandon so I could speak to the police officer who would have been well within the limits of the law to throw you in a cell. How would a record affect your hopes of playing college football? Your scholarship chances?”
“College is a long way off,” Max says flatly. He glances at Bill, who’s staring at the opposing wall as if the people arguing around him are someone else’s family. Ivy slides closer to him, like her nearness might protect him from the hurt Max’s crappy choices inflict.
He swipes a cookie from the buffet and takes a big bite. Crumbs cascade to the floor in a display that’s horrifying in its irreverence. Still, I can’t look away. None of us can, which is terrible and unfair and absolutely ironic. I suspect this is exactly what he was drinking to avoid: forced togetherness, a less-than-joyful holiday gathering, families trying too hard to restore a normal that’s irreparably shattered.
Marcy holds out her hand. “Give me your keys.”
Max’s anger flares. “What?”
“Your keys,” Marcy says. “I want them.”
“Why?”
“Because your father and I trusted you to use that truck responsibly. You’re doing the opposite.”
“How the hell am I supposed to get around?”
“Figure it out. I refuse to watch you risk your future—your life. This household does not have the financial security to gamble on your poor choices. We can’t afford legal fees if you’re arrested, and we can’t afford additional medical costs if you cause an accident.”
Her open hand is steady and still in Max’s agitated face.
He yanks his keys, adorned with a leather football key chain, from his pocket. He fumbles momentarily before crushing them into his mother’s palm. Then he stalks toward the stairs, breathing heavily and grumbling faintly, so swollen with emotion I worry he’ll burst.
It hits me hard, the irresistible, idiotic urge to follow him, talk to him, hug him—something. Plaguing what-ifs have made his sweetness, his enviable zest for life, go rancid, but he’s still Max.
I shoot up from my place on the bench.
“Jill!” my dad barks.
Max already has a foot on the stairs, but he pivots slowly to look at me, question marks blinking behind his eyes. He’s not inviting my company, but he’s not discouraging it.
“Sit down, Jillian,” Dad says.
The kitchen falls silent but for the sound of Oliver’s wheezy winter breath and the hum of the furnace. Nine pairs of eyes are trained on me, watching to see what I’ll do.
Max lingers, motionless, while I stand on legs that wobble with uncertainty. I want to go to him because, more than anything in the world, I want him to tell me he’s willing to try to get his life back on track. But I don’t think he is, and I won’t enable him—not like Becky. I won’t tell him it’s okay to drink and drive, to hurt his parents, to risk his future. I won’t let him use me as a diversion from everything that’s wrong in his world. I will not—cannot—trade my priorities, my values, my sense of worth, to be his second best.
I sit back down.
Max shakes his head, his gaze pinning me to my place on the bench.
He looks disgruntled.
He looks unmoored.
He looks broken.
He releases a hefty sigh, and then he throws his fist through the wall.
15
I’M MISERABLE, SO TIME PASSES LIKE MOLASSES from a chilled jar.
Portland for Christmas: endless, tax-free shopping trips for baby clothes, baby gear, baby products. The long drive home: Dad and Meredith, silent but on edge, the aftermath of an argument I missed. The lull between Christmas and the new year: work at True Brew, work on my original chocolate chip cookie recipe, work on my English lit reading list. The highlight? Dad’s officially forgiven my Bunco binge. I’m no longer grounded, and I celebrate with an evening at the movies with Leah.
I spend the afternoon of New Year’s Eve working on my butter nut brittle recipe. Dad’s not home, but Meredith sits, uninvited, on a kitchen stool through several slightly flawed variations of the candy, taste testing and offering her candid opinions (“How about a tiny bit more vanilla extract?” or “Finely chopped pecans with the peanuts might be yummy!”). Her criticisms are mildly irritating, but it seems the leech baby has refined her palate; I hate to admit it, but her input proves more helpful than it has in the past.