Chương 7
“Hey.”
Adrian kept walking.
“Hey.”
Travis caught his arm.
Adrian looked down at the hand until Travis removed it.
“Don’t turn this into something it isn’t.”
“That phrase should be on the family crest.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Mom’s angry.”
“So am I.”
“She thinks you’re using Lila to force a financial concession.”
Adrian stared at him.
“And what do you think?”
Travis rubbed his jaw.
“I think you’ve always had a martyr problem.”
Adrian barked a short laugh.
“There he is.”
“I also think Mom crossed a line.”
Adrian went still.
Travis immediately looked annoyed with himself.
“Which line?”
“You know which one.”
“Say it.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Say it.”
Travis glanced down the hall toward the empty reception desk.
“She shouldn’t have said that to Lila.”
“Anything else?”
“She shouldn’t have thrown the toy.”
“Anything else?”
“What do you want, a confession?”
“I want to know if you knew.”
Travis’s eyes shifted.
Barely.
Enough.
Adrian felt sick.
“You knew.”
“I knew she was going to say something to you.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I didn’t know exactly what she would say.”
“But you knew she was going after Lila.”
“I knew she was done tiptoeing around it.”
“Tiptoeing around what?”
“The fact that you changed your entire life around a child who isn’t biologically yours.”
Adrian stared at his brother.
Travis immediately raised both hands.
“I’m describing her view.”
“No. You’re describing it too easily.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Did you tell her to do it?”
“No.”
“Did you try to stop her?”
Travis looked away.
Adrian nodded.
“Okay.”
“That doesn’t mean I agreed.”
“You stood next to her.”
“So did June.”
“June called me yesterday.”
Travis’s expression changed.
“She apologized.”
Something ugly passed across his face.
“Of course she did.”
“Why does that bother you?”
“Because everybody gets to become morally pure after the fact and leave me holding the bag.”
Adrian laughed in disbelief.
“You told a six-year-old she didn’t belong in your mother’s house.”
“After you started acting like a lunatic.”
“No. You said it before I threw anything.”
Travis rubbed his forehead.
For the first time, he looked tired instead of arrogant.
“Our whole lives,” he said, “you get to be the one who leaves.”
Adrian frowned.
“What?”
“You quit baseball because Dad was too intense. You moved out at eighteen because Mom was controlling. You left the company for three years because you hated sales meetings. Then you came back, married Nora, and suddenly everybody had to rearrange themselves around whatever boundary you announced that month.”
Adrian stared at him.
Travis continued.
“You think I don’t know Mom is difficult?”
“Difficult.”
“Fine. Cruel. Happy?”
“No.”
“I stayed.”
“That was your choice.”
“Exactly. And choices have consequences.”
“So does staying.”
The sentence landed harder than Adrian intended.
Travis looked at him.
Something shifted.
Not reconciliation.
Recognition, maybe.
Then Travis’s face closed again.
“You’re really going to quit.”
“I don’t know yet.”
“If you do, she’ll blame Lila.”
“Then she’ll be wrong.”
“She won’t know she’s wrong.”
“That has never stopped her before.”
The elevator opened.
Adrian stepped inside.
Travis stayed in the hallway.
Before the doors closed, he said, “I’m not apologizing for getting hit with a toy.”
Adrian pressed the lobby button.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You should apologize to me.”
Adrian thought about it.
Then nodded.
“You’re right.”
Travis blinked.
“I shouldn’t have thrown it.”
The elevator doors began to close.
Adrian added, “And you should never have made my daughter the target of a fight you were having with me.”
The doors shut before Travis answered.
Adrian drove home without music.
At a stoplight, he opened an email he had ignored three months earlier from Marcus Bell, a former project manager who had left Cole Residential to join a regional commercial builder.
If you ever get tired of arguing with your family for a living, call me.
At the time Adrian had replied with a thumbs-up emoji.
Now he stared at the message.
June’s voice returned to him.
Bills enjoy the quiet afterward.
He did not call Marcus.
Not yet.
He went home.
Lila was at the kitchen table with Mrs. Ramirez from next door, who had agreed to watch her for two hours and had somehow allowed an art project to colonize nearly every flat surface in the room.
“You’re early,” Mrs. Ramirez said.
“I escaped.”
“Good for you.”
She was seventy-four and had never shown the slightest interest in being impressed by the Cole family.
Lila looked up.
“Daddy, I made a family tree.”
Adrian’s stomach tightened.
Of course she had.
Construction paper covered the table.
There were drawings of people attached to branches made from brown crayon.
Lila had drawn herself near the middle.
Nora was beside her, with yellow hair that Nora had never possessed.
Adrian was on the other side.
His arms were longer than his legs.
At the top, Evelyn had been drawn with gray hair and a mouth shaped like a straight line.
Travis appeared below her.
His face had a red circle on it.
Adrian pointed.
“What’s that?”
“Rudolph.”
Mrs. Ramirez looked away very quickly.
Adrian pressed his lips together.
“Did you tell Mrs. Ramirez?”
“Only the important parts.”
“That concerns me.”
“She said throwing things is not good.”
Mrs. Ramirez raised both eyebrows at him.
“I agree,” Adrian said.
Lila tapped his picture.
“Grandma says you’re not connected.”
Adrian pulled out a chair.
“What do you mean?”
Lila pointed to the brown branches.
“I don’t know how to draw it.”
“Draw what?”
“If Evan goes here.”
She pointed somewhere near Nora.
“And you go here.”
She pointed near herself.
“Then why are there two lines?”
Adrian looked at the paper.
Mrs. Ramirez quietly started gathering her purse.
“I’m going to pretend I have somewhere to be.”
“You do,” Adrian said.
“I do now.”
She kissed Lila’s head and left.
Adrian sat at the table.
May you like
He picked up the brown crayon.
“Do you want me to show you how I think it works?”
