“Oh, sweetie,” Jane said. “Of course we’re family, you matter more than anything. I promised your dad I’d help you graduate, and I will. I am. But I need you to help yourself; I need you to try. Okay? Please.”

“I am trying!” he wailed. “I am exploring my options for true happiness in life, and I’m real sorry it’s taking too long and inconveniencing everyone so much.”

“Honey, I know he’s hard on you, and I understand you’re still…exploring. But don’t you want to have a job one day? Move out of your dad’s house, have your own place, live an independent life?”

“Dude is like thirty-two years old,” Sean whispered near my ear.

“Sure,” Natan practically spit. “As soon as you get an independent life and stop borrowing money from my dad.”

A chair scraped the floor. We bolted and watched from the trees until Natan was safely gone, and then Sean walked me all the way to Francine’s.

“I mean…,” he began. “I feel dirty.”

“Me too.” I sighed. “And I think we’re stuck with him.”

“Family,” Sean said. Then he took my hand again and pulled me to him, hugged me right there on the side of the road. “Not all of them are,” he said, “but that’s a super fucked-up one.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like I can say, with some authority as an observer, that this one is of a pretty common variety.”

“That’s depressing. And you do have the authority.”

“What would your dad have said about that whole…situation?” I asked.

“Plenty. None of it real considerate of Natan’s delicate sensibilities.”

“What about your mom?”

He smiled. “She’d be pissed at the brother. And Jane. She’d say they made him who he is and now they don’t get to be pissed he’s a grown man living at home ‘searching for his happiness.’ My parents would give me a tent and send me to forage in the woods alone rather than have me in Natan’s situation.”

“Learned helplessness,” I sighed. We walked until we reached Francine’s road. “Your mom sounds like my kind of person.”

“You’re definitely hers.” He looked down the road to Francine’s house.

“Want to come in?” I saw her car was gone. “Except wait, she’s not home.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“Not a good idea,” I said.

He kissed me. “We’ll figure out Natan. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“See you Monday?”

“Monday.”

—

Sunday afternoon at the Island Thrift Shop was the happening place—for moms and bored, tantruming kids after church.