Chapters (43)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Books by Ben Philippe
- Back Ad
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
I barely have time to register whatever is happening on Dad’s face that we’re both startled by one of the two ceramic bowls from the kitchen table shattering against the wall next to me.
“Do not dare, Henri,” Ma says, her voice operating at the same volume as it always does with the only exception being that all the muscles in her arms and every vein and tendon are tensed and flexed in outrage.
“Mom—”
“No, you don’t get to speak that way to him,” she says, locked on me. “Not ever.”
There’s no follow-up, no waiting for me to reply. It’s an edict from her that won’t be crossed. Her face only softens once it turns to Dad.
“Jacques.”
Dad’s head jerks away when she reaches to touch his cheek, and he instead provides a tight smile. “I’m fine. I’m late.”
“Apologize now, Henri,” Ma warns.
“Dad, I—”
“No,” Dad says, preempting me. “It’s done. It’s all done.”
He slams the front door behind him without granting me another look. Ma shakes her head and just stands there for a moment, eyes shut and chin pointed to the ceiling as though she wishes she was in the middle of a burning building right now.
I stay quiet. The opposite hasn’t been working in my favor today. After a beat, Ma collects her coat and phone, and I can’t tell if she’s going after Dad or if it’s time for her to check in at the station. She throws one last look at me.
“Dumb,” she says before slamming the door herself, leaving me alone with all the crooked and unimpressed relatives, and that pit of shame in my gut.
Twenty-Seven
The Manhattan skies are overcast like it might snow, briefly and wetly, but hours from now, maybe even into the night. It’s the perfect weather for the writers sitting in coffee shops alongside Columbus Avenue to be looking out the windows in search of inspiration. I clock their faces on the walk home, in no great hurry to enter our apartment right now. I’ve been walking around my neighborhood for the past twenty minutes trying to clear my head, but I just keep replaying my fight with Dad over and over.
I turn the corner to our street, and that’s when I see her. Corinne.
An hour ago—less, even—I wanted nothing more than to see Corinne. To tell her about Columbia, to pick her up and spin her around. Now, the sight of her standing right outside the Wyatt with a phone at her ear and Palm Tree at the end of a new leash is the last thing I want.