“Seems maybe that’s the way with parents and kids,” Jo replies, still matter-of-fact. “Expectations. And then some big surprise when kids are their own selves, as if we don’t see that coming.”
“It’s that way with my parents,” Phee agrees. “My mother definitely disapproves of me. Especially right this minute. She’s going to hand me my ass on a silver platter the next time she sees me, on account of this escapade.”
“Well, tell her I said thanks,” Jo says. “Eleven years since I’ve seen my brother. Hard to believe it’s been so long. Hard to believe it isn’t longer.”
“What happened to him? And to Uncle Mitch?” Allie asks. “Mom wouldn’t talk about it.”
“An accident happened.” Jo lifts an enormous pot of soup off the stove and onto a trivet on the counter. “Bowls are in that cupboard right behind you, Phee, if you’d like to get them out. Braden thinks it’s all his fault, what happened to Mitch. Been beating himself up over that for years.”
“Was it?” Allie asks. “Dad’s fault, I mean?”
“Of course not. But he won’t hear that.”
“Hey,” Steph says, coming into the room and sniffing loudly. “That smells fantastic.”
“Didn’t I see a dog in the rig?” Jo asks. “I can scrounge up some scraps.”
“He’s in the car. He’s fine out—” Phee is interrupted by raised voices in the living room.
“Enough with the bullshit excuses! It’s about time you told us—”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Jo marches back into the living room. “Can’t I leave the two of you alone for five minutes? Stop this at once.”
Len and Dennis sit on the couch, their faces registering their discomfort. Jean and Katie are nowhere to be seen. Braden and his father are squared off in the middle of the room.
“Back off, Jo,” the old man says. “It’s time we had it out, man to man.”
“We have company,” Jo says, her voice a warning.
“If he doesn’t want them to hear this, then he should have come here without them years ago.” His dark eyes shift to Allie, who has followed, right behind Phee. “Aren’t you tired of being in the dark? I sure as hell am.”
“Dad. Don’t,” Jo pleads.
“Two men go out to the cabin. Only one comes home. He never talks about it, never says what happened. I think we deserve some goddamn answers. That’s what I think.”
Phee holds her breath, puts a steadying hand on Allie’s shoulder.
“You sound like a politician,” Braden’s father says. “‘I’m sorry, I just don’t recall.’ Be a man for once in your life.”
“Let it go, already,” Jo says. “The details won’t bring Mitch back.”
“What really matters to Dad,” Braden answers, “is that I’m not Mitch. He was the son you never had and always wanted. He’s dead, and I’m still here. That’s the problem. What you really want to know is why it wasn’t the other way around.”
“Enough!” Jo snaps. “This is my house, and I won’t hear one more word of this. Not now. Soup and bread in the kitchen. Come on.” She begins herding people out of the living room and toward the kitchen.
Braden breaks away, out into the cold dark, slamming the door. Phee slips out behind him.
He’s standing in the middle of the yard, his face turned up to the sky. Phee, born and raised in the city, has never seen so many stars all at once. She feels her way through the dark to the SUV and lets Celestine out. He rewards her with the swipe of a tongue across her hand before beginning an investigation of all the new smells.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Braden asks. “The stars make all of this mess seem small and petty.”
“Hard to believe they are all suns,” she says, taking his words as an invitation to stand beside him. “They look so cold and tiny.”
“When I was a kid, I thought they were heavenly watchers who didn’t give a damn what happens to us down here.”
“And now?”
“Same as when I was a kid.”
They are silent, staring up at the stars. Phee becomes aware of a silence as vast as the heavens above them, broken only by Celestine’s snuffling and their own breathing. She’s trying to think how to frame an explanation for what she’s done, but Braden speaks first, the last words she was expecting to hear from him.
“Maybe you were right.”
Phee sucks in a breath of surprise and chokes on her own saliva, her coughing shattering the silence and the mood.