Page 28 of Everything You Hate
Dean was Henry Haven’s little brother. Not a family friend the Havens absorbed somewhere along the way. Not a cousin, not an in-law.
Brother.
The age gap explains a lot. Dean was born into a family that already had a nephew his age. He grew up an uncle before he was old enough to understand what the word meant.
Henry must have taken his wife’s name when they married.
“He’s the greatest,” Hazel continues, oblivious to the fact I haven’t answered. “That’s why he’s Great Uncle Dean and not just Uncle Dean.” She delivers this as established fact. “Uncle Knox is good too, but he’s not here all the time.” A pause. “Don’t tell Uncle Knox. It would hurt his feelings.”
“Our other brother, Knox, is in Montana,” Colter explains, straightening. “Fire season started early. He’s been out on a line in the Bitterroot going on three weeks.”
“Is that bad?” I ask.
“It’s not good.” Shea says it without turning from the stove, and her voice has gone careful in a way it wasn’t a minute ago. “He called Tuesday. Sounded like he’d swallowed a campfire.”
“He always sounds like that,” Colter says.
“He didn’t used to.”
Nobody answers that. Mimi bangs a pot lid down harder than she needs to, and the conversation moves, but I notice Shea checks her phone twice in the next five minutes. Screen down on the counter, face up, screen down again.
Hazel hands me a stack of mismatched plates and marches me into the dining room like a small conscripting officer.
Photographs cover the walls. Generations of them. In the biggest frame, a dark-haired woman stands beside a younger Henry, laughing at something outside the shot.
“That’s Grandma Lana,” Hazel says. “She’s in heaven. But we still talk to her at dinner so she doesn’t get lonely.”
“We always set a place for Mom,” Wren adds. “Used to weird me out when friends came over. I was pretty young when she died, and always thought it was embarrassing to have a dead mother. Now?” She lifts a shoulder, lets it drop. “I don’t know. I get it, I guess. She was the love of Dad’s life. We could all be so lucky to find that someday.”
What would it have been like to have a mother like Lana Haven, a woman so loved that she still had a place at the dinner table years after she died?
I don’t know.
I think of my mother’s voice on a speakerphone, the noise of an airport lounge behind her as she tells me she’d try for the recital but couldn’t promise. I think of the nannies. Ilse, then Marta, then the one whose name I’ve genuinely lost.
I look up at Lana’s portrait again. “She was beautiful.”
“Yeah.” Wren nods, and there’s a softness in her that wasn’t there a second ago. “Dad says she had this laugh that could stop a room. And she was mean about it too. Like, she’d wait for the worst possible moment and just—bam.” She snaps her fingers. “Ruin whatever serious thing was happening.”
“I like her already.”
“Everybody did.” Wren adjusts another fork. “Except the Merricks, I guess. But that’s a whole other thing.”
I open my mouth to ask about that, but the front door opens, and a man strides in with a laptop under one arm and a tie pulled loose. The room’s temperature drops a few degrees. He has the same eyes as the rest of them and a jaw wound tight enough to crack a molar.
“Bodhi.” Shea turns from the stove, wiping her hands on her apron. “You’re late.”
“Dock permits. Again.”
“They denied you?” Dean asks.
“Delayed. Which is denial with more paperwork.” He drags a hand through his hair. “I’ve got until Thursday to file an appeal, or we lose south shore docking until next season.”
“That’s Malcolm.”
“I’m aware. He’s burying us in paperwork until we go out of business.”
“You should take him to court,” Wren suggests. “Fight him.”
