Page 174

“And if the money isn’t there?” my father says.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“Loans?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Something moves on my father’s face. It might be approval. With him it’s hard to tell.

“Your parents can’t help?”

I go still. “Dad—”

But she’s already answering. She answers the way she answered the bus company, calm and polite.

“I don’t know my dad,” she says.

My father pauses with his fork halfway up.

“Your mother?”

“She uses drugs,” Tessa says.

Just that. No softening it. No she’s had a hard time, or she’s not really in the picture. Three words put down on the table between the potatoes and the beans.

The room changes.

My mom’s hand stops on her wineglass. My dad puts his fork down. Her bluntness makes me feel a certain way.

My mom’s face goes soft. I see it start. The eyebrows going up in the middle, her mouth opening, the whole face getting ready to tip over into the thing Tessa hates more than anything, the oh, sweetheart face from Thanksgiving.

“Oh, sweetheart—”

“Mom,” I say.

Sharp. Too sharp.

My mom looks at me. Her eyebrows come down.

“Rafferty,” she says, in the voice she’s been using on me since I was four. The one that means I know what I’m doing, and I’m not the one being rude.

I open my mouth.

And I feel Tessa look at me.

I look over. She’s looking at me with her fork in her hand. Not upset. Not embarrassed. Just steady. And she does something small with her face. A little tilt of her chin, a small flat line of her mouth.

I’m fine.

She’s reading me. And telling me. Both at once.

I close my mouth.

My dad picks his fork back up. He doesn’t look at Tessa with that face. He doesn’t look at her with any face. He just eats a piece of roast, chews it and swallows.

“My father drank,” he says.

The table goes quiet.