Page 25 of The Candle Palace (Jamison Valley 6)
“About?”
“What’s your family think about you staying here with me most nights?”
My family? They didn’t even care to ask what I did at night. “I’m not really close to my family.”
“What about a roommate? Or, um . . .” Milo’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “A boyfriend?”
I dropped my chin to hide my smile. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Oh.” He looked toward the opposite wall but not before I caught the corner of his mouth turning up. “So you’re not close to your family?”
“Not really.”
“Tell me about them?”
“There’s not a lot to tell. I grew up here, for the most part.”
“What do you mean, for the most part?” he asked.
I shifted in the seat, tucking a leg under my rear to get comfortable. “My parents divorced when I was ten. My mom’s always been sort of flighty. That was the word Dad always used to describe her.”
And as I’d grown up, I’d realized flighty was being generous. Mom’s troubles were more than being absentminded. She wasn’t scatterbrained. She just didn’t give a damn about anything. Well, except for my brother. And herself.
“After the divorce, my mom decided to move to Seattle. She wanted to live in a bigger city. She took me and my younger brother, Denny, with her. I lasted a month and then begged my dad to come and get me.”
I’d hated living with Mom. She’d been too busy exploring her new city and finding a young boyfriend to care about the upheaval she’d put Denny and me through. We rarely ate a home-cooked meal. She sent me to school in dirty clothes more than once because she’d forgotten to do laundry. I’d called Dad in tears and begged him to come for me. He’d been at the door four hours later with an empty suitcase.
Denny had been eight and loved the change. He’d gone from structure and schedules under Dad’s roof to ultimate freedom under Mom’s. He didn’t mind eating cold cereal every single day or wearing the same jeans five days in a row.
“So you came back?” Milo asked.
“Yep.” I nodded. “I lived with Dad. Denny stayed with Mom.”
And because of it, he’d missed learning all of the lessons about becoming a responsible member of society Dad had made sure to teach me.
“The only thing I didn’t like about living with Dad was he was a smoker.”
“Was?”
“Was,” I whispered. “Dad smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. When I got into high school, I used to razz him about it constantly. He cut back to half a pack but I guess I should have nagged him harder. About three years ago he caught a bad cold. It turned into pneumonia. Then it turned into stage-four lung cancer. He died eight months later.”
“Sara, I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks.” I gave him a small smile. “I miss him.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“He was my best friend.” My chin quivered as the sting in my nose burned hot. “We used to do everything together. Simple things that meant a lot. We grocery shopped together. We planted flowers in the yard every May. We ate pizza and watched HBO on Friday nights.”
The hole he’d left behind hadn’t begun to close. There was no one to fill his void. And being around my mother and brother only seemed to make it grow.
“Are you close with your mom?” Milo asked.
“No.” I scoffed. “Not at all. Honestly, I don’t think she likes me much. I think I remind her too much of Dad. Or maybe she’s still hurt by my choice. When I left Seattle to come back with Dad, she didn’t understand.”
Mom put all her energy into Denny after that. She called me once a week at first, but as the years went on, the calls became fewer and farther between. The only times I saw her were on the trips Dad and I would take to Seattle so he could visit Denny. Three times a year, Mom would hug me and tell me how much she missed me. But there had always been a feeling under those words. A bitter tension to the hugs.
Now that she was back in Spokane, she nitpicked everything I did. What I wore. My makeup—or lack thereof. My ponytail and how it was pulled up too tight.
