The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,77

strange to have him there all the time. And he’s not allowed to work, so he’s been watching ancient basketball games. . . .” My voice trailed off. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about the terrible dinner we’d had and all our awkward silences, which were made that much worse because it was like my dad didn’t even notice them. “I think he’s waiting for the investigation to clear him, so he can go back to work.”

There was a small pause, and Clark nodded, then asked quietly, “And what if he can’t? I mean . . . if it doesn’t come back in his favor?”

This was the very question I had been trying not to ask myself since it happened. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, what did he do before?” Clark asked, then smiled. “I didn’t get that far on his Wikipedia page.”

“He was a public defender.” I could hear the pride in my voice when I said it. I had always liked the idea of it: my dad, helping out the people who couldn’t afford their own counsel, righting the wrongs of innocent victims—and a lot of scumbags, too, based on the stories I’d heard. “It was actually how my parents met.” I couldn’t quite believe I was saying this, but the words were out before I could stop them. The story that the media had was that my parents had met while working together, which was technically true, but without any of the details. “She was putting herself through art school working as a police sketch artist,” I said, feeling myself smile even as I had to swallow hard. “And my dad was furious that one of her sketches looked exactly like his client, and they started fighting about it.”

Clark leaned forward. “Did the guy do it?”

“Stabby Bob?” I asked, and Clark laughed. “Totally. But it was enough to introduce them.” At the farmhouse, a framed sketch of Bob—long white beard, tattoos, a gleam of crazy in his eyes—had hung in the entryway, startling almost everyone who came over. I had no idea where it was now. Like most of my mother’s art, it hadn’t been hung up in the new place. I assumed he was in storage somewhere, no doubt carefully wrapped, but put away, out of sight.

“That’s kind of how my parents met too,” Clark said, and I felt my eyebrows raise in surprise. “Well, minus the stabbing guy,” he acknowledged. “My dad went to audit a dental practice where my mom was working as a bookkeeper. She’d had the books so organized and could answer every question he threw at her, so he hired her away to work for him.”

“So both your parents are accountants?” I asked, and Clark nodded. “That must have been rough.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, shaking his head. Then he looked at me and gave me a smile, like he’d decided something, before going on. “This one time, I think I was eight, they’d sent me to the store and told me to bring back change. But when I was walking back, I saw a new Batman comic. . . .” As Clark went on, telling his story, I realized that I wasn’t trying to stop him, or control the conversation, or keep him from asking me something I didn’t want to answer. It was like talking to my friends—and I would just have to see where the conversation took me. And so, surprising myself, I leaned forward to listen.

• • •

“Explain it to me,” I said. Now that I was, apparently, spending the night in their house, I thought I needed to know a little more about the people who lived there. “Since you’re not Clark Goetz-Hoffman.”

Clark winced. “That’s a pretty terrible name,” he said, and I silently agreed. “My publisher is Goetz. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is Hoffman.”

“Got it.” I looked at Bertie’s water dish, at the B. W. that was painted there. “Then what’s the W for?”

“Oh,” Clark said, giving Bertie a gentle pat. “That’s his middle name.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “The dog has a middle name?”

“Bertie Woofter Goetz-Hoffman,” Clark said, raising an eyebrow at me, letting me know he thought this was ridiculous too.

“Woofter?”

“Yeah,” Clark said with a shrug. “It’s from a book they liked. The character is Bertie Wooster . . . so it’s like a pun.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding, remembering the framed book cover I’d seen the first day. “So the dog has four names,” I said, still trying to get