it from a yawn. “Like I said, shit’s weird. Erin’s having Thanksgiving dinner with you guys?”
“I know, it’s bizarre, right? Her flight home got canceled due to weather, and I couldn’t leave her alone in the apartment to eat ramen and look gloomily out the window at old Bill. My folks think she’s pretty cool. She’s really useful in the kitchen, too. Not like me. My talents begin and end with pancakes, and that’s a job for tomorrow morning, not for tonight.”
“Has she said anything to you?”
“Anything like what?” Dodger sounds honestly curious, and honestly confused. For once, he’s the one whose world is falling apart, while hers is continuing on a normal keel.
For the first time, he understands why she didn’t tell him how unhappy she was, all those years and all that bloodshed ago. Being in someone’s head like this, it’s . . . intimate in a way nothing else in his life has ever been. Barging in on her and telling her how scared he was by the silence and stillness of his parents seems unfair, like an intrusion she didn’t ask for and can’t avoid. He wants to protect her. He wants to let her have her holiday. He can tell her later, with words spoken in the air and not in the space they make between them, about his concerns.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” Dodger shifts in her chair. Across the lawn, her father waves. She waves back, smiling through her teeth as she hisses, “Remember what happened last time one of us decided to keep secrets? Now give. What’s going on?”
“I just . . . Erin?”
“Yeah, Erin. What’s going on with your parents?”
“I don’t know.” Quickly, he describes what happened at the dinner table. He wants to edit, to cast them in a better light. He doesn’t. Dodger appreciates facts, says math is impossible if you don’t know your starting figures. She won’t judge them based on a single meal. She’ll understand.
When he finishes, she’s quiet. Too quiet, for too long. He’s growing concerned when she says, “Their response to the idea of you and me dating was disproportionate.”
“What?”
“Everything else could be written off as an exaggerated reaction to a conversation they’ve been worried about for twenty years. My folks don’t like to talk about the adoption either. Not quite that viciously, but they get twitchy when I bring it up. I could make comforting noises and pretend everything about this was normal, except for that response. Your mother looked disgusted. You said I existed, you set a group of parameters that could apply to dozens of girls, you never said we were romantically involved, and yet she looked like she was going to throw up. That’s not a proportionate response. They know about me. They knew before you brought me up.”
“I don’t think . . .”
“Do the math,” she says, and it’s a kind statement, a gentle statement, especially for her, who considers math the only true underpinning of the universe: she’s trying, in her own sledgehammer way, to nudge him along. “Parents of adult adoptees are sometimes sensitive to the idea that their children might go looking for their biological parents; there’s no ‘right way’ to respond. You get helpful parents, parents who’ve been in secret correspondence with the bio parents for years, and you get parents who’ll lie to your face and say the bio parents are dead when they aren’t. Humans are complicated. Humans make decisions based on the data at hand. So yeah, it’s weird that they got twitchy, but if you’ve never tried to talk about it with them before, it’s not outside the numbers.”
“I guess.”
“It’s the rest of it.” Dodger sits up fully, draping her arms across her knees. “They shouldn’t have jumped straight from ‘there’s a girl’ to ‘are you dating her.’ If they did, they shouldn’t have been disgusted. Not unless they already knew there was a girl out there for you to find, a girl you shouldn’t be romantically involved with. It doesn’t add up.”
“What should I do? Should I go talk to them?”
“No. Wait for them to come and talk to you.” Dodger pauses. “And . . . be careful.”
“I will,” he promises, and opens his eyes. The feeling of isolation is immediate, stronger than the norm; usually, he and Dodger pop in and out of each other’s heads a few times a day, checking in, asking questions, and exiting again, as comfortable solo as they are together. Here and now, however, the fact