Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,84
were inside it.
“What about him?” I asked, although I was afraid I knew.
He hesitated. Looked at his phone. Then he leaned back against the folding table, arms folded across his chest.
“He just told me he doesn’t want to go to Smith Mountain Lake with me this year,” he said. “He’d rather spend the time with his mother and stepfather in Disney World.”
I heard the hurt in his voice. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, surprised by the twist of pain I felt in my own chest, seeing his disappointment. He’d been so looking forward to the time with his son. “But I don’t think you have it exactly right,” I added.
He raised his eyebrows. “No?”
“Nathan talked to me about it that day you sent us to get lunch.”
“He did?” He looked puzzled. Maybe a little hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I sat down on the chair next to the mural. I felt guilty. Maybe I should have told him. “He wasn’t sure of his decision then,” I said. “I was hoping he’d end up going with you. And it didn’t feel like my place to say anything. I thought he needed to tell you himself.”
Oliver hesitated, then nodded. “True,” he finally agreed. “So how don’t I have it exactly right?”
“Because you think he’s picking his mother and stepfather over you, but that’s not it at all, Oliver. He’s picking Disney World over the lake.” I smiled at him with sympathy. “Any kid would. I would have given anything to go to Disney World when I was Nathan’s age.”
Oliver unfolded his arms and looked down at the phone in his hand as if he could see Nathan’s image there. He let out a heavy sigh. “You know, I’m glad for Stephanie. Nathan’s mother,” he said. “She deserves a happy marriage. But … and I feel small about this … her husband makes about ten times what I make, and Nathan’s at an age where that matters. His stepdad can give him anything he wants.” He gave me a weak smile. “I know on the deepest level that shouldn’t matter, but it does.”
I was touched that he was confiding in me and I hurt for him. “I think he’s so lucky to have you as a dad,” I said.
He let out a small laugh. “Well, thanks for saying that,” he said. “And I’m sorry to lay my problems on you,” he said. “You just caught me at a weak moment.”
“A human moment,” I said. “You seem so perfect all the time that I’m glad to see you’re mortal like everybody else.”
“Oh, I’m mortal all right.” He slipped his phone into the pocket of his jeans and stepped away from the table. “And I guess we’d better get back to work.”
I nodded, but as I stood up to reach for my palette, he spoke again.
“Were your parents divorced, Morgan?” he asked.
I looked at my palette but didn’t pick it up. “No,” I said, raising my gaze to him again. He looked sincerely interested in my answer, blue eyes serious. “But they should have been.”
“That bad, huh?”
I let out a breath. “You have no idea.” I felt danger creeping in. A tightness in my throat that told me I was going to fall apart if I talked about the past. I was too tired. Too vulnerable. And yet, Oliver stood there with those kind blue eyes, and he looked so ready to listen. “My parents were alcoholics,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. “You learned from the masters?”
I nodded. “Not just that. They … I was their only child and they didn’t know how to be parents. They sucked at it, frankly. They were madly, sloppily, drunkenly, disgustingly in love with each other and had nothing left over for—” Oh, shit. I was going to lose it.
“Hey,” he said, a worried expression on his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was such a touchy subject.”
I sat down again, the muscles in my legs starting to quiver. I was surprised I was telling him about my growing-up years. I rarely spoke to anyone about my family. “The only attention I ever got from them was negative attention,” I said. “’You want to be an artist? You don’t have the talent to be any good at it, and you’ll never make any money at it, and don’t come running to us when you’re broke and living on the street.’” I looked down at my hands where they were locked together in my lap, my knuckles white. “They’d forget