“Oh, my mom doesn’t know anything about art. She can’t even play Pictionary. She’s a disaster with a pencil.” Carly hoped her smile was nice and that what she’d said hadn’t come out snotty. She hated getting stranded on the unknowing side of a knowing smile. When adults talked about Oh, teenagers as if they were all the same and all out-of-control obnoxious, it made her wish she’d never said anything at all—ever. “I don’t think John knows about art either.”

Emma closed her mouth and tilted her head. Carly saw her take a slow inhale that lasted forever. She hadn’t moved. That was it. That’s what was different. She’d gone statue still.

“John’s her stepdad,” said Ada, never to stay forgotten in a conversation for long. “I got to be in the wedding. Junior bridesmaid.” Ada nodded at her own commentary, wise with pride. “Me and Carly had matching dresses. They itched.”

“They were the worst,” said Carly. “But, yeah. I just draw on my own. I get comics and cartoon books from the library sometimes. Just to look at. Mom and John are really nice about my drawings. Really supportive. But they don’t know anything about art.”

“Is that right?” Emma said. “That’s interesting.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

John didn’t know anything about art, but he knew a fair bit about things that were old. He’d grown up with the vague idea that his father had a dedication to three things: root beer, real beer, and flea markets.

As Jonathan got toward adulthood, he understood there was more to it, that his father was ill, wrung in cycles of hopelessness that didn’t seem to obey any rules of cause and effect. But the truth was that John never really gave a shit about any of that. He didn’t have much of an attention span for wondering about the invisible weight that pressed his father.

His mother had always made up the practical difference anyway, sometimes with three jobs at once and always with a watchful eye on her husband’s frailties. He wouldn’t protest as she’d donate a truckload of his accumulated junk and move them on to the next town, and into the invigorating distraction of a fresh start.

It was time to go if the man of the house bloomed in enthusiasms that swelled into days-long impassioned rants. He’d quit his job at the grocery or hardware store and spend his time instead bringing in carloads, sometimes even borrowed-truck loads, of plunder as he discovered this, that, and every ridiculous other. At one point, they’d owned four washing machines and two refrigerators, a blocky white Stonehenge of appliances in the living room, all just as useful plugged in as not.