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“I think your dad’s a decent guy that made a dumb mistake, and my uncle’s an asshole that maybe made a dumber one.”

“That about sums it up,” Madison agrees.

“I just don’t want it to be a thing. With you and me, I mean,” Bristal says, pointing between the two of us, her finger tracing an irregular path between us. “It’s just dumb. I hate all of it. It’s dumb.”

“What my daughter is saying, is that she’s sorry, too,” Madison explains. “It’s just she’s drunk and when she’s been drinking she stops swearing and it becomes hard to understand her communications without it.”

“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” I tell Bristal.

“I told you to—” Her voice peters out, her face coming together into the squish of an ugly cry.

“Oh my God, stop!” I yell, coming to my feet. “If you start crying—”

“Told you to f-f-f-f-fuck off,” Bristal says, her face totally collapsing as the tears come in a rush.

“It’s fine! It’s . . . I forgive you!” I grab Bristal as she falls forward, a deep sob coming from her chest.

“Crap,” I say, crying now as well, my hot tears falling into her still-damp hair.

“Oh, dammit, you two,” Madison says, wiping her own eyes.

I pull back from Bristal, giving her a serious look. “You need to unblock me.”

“Huh?” she says, face suddenly blank. “Oh, yeah. Of course.”

“Wait, let me do it,” Madison says, diving for her daughter’s phone. “All I have is work friends. We don’t have any high drama. I’ve never had to block anybody. Or unblock them.” She stares at the phone for a second, perplexed. “How do I do it?”

“Here,” I say, reaching for Bristal’s phone and unblocking myself.

“Never get old, kids,” Madison says, her eyes following my fingers as they flash over Bristal’s phone.

“Never get married, and never get old.”

Thirty-Five

I walk with Bristal out to her car, deflated and a little tipsy. Even though she’s had more to drink than me, Bristal heads over to her punching bag and delivers a few solid kicks to it before sitting down—hard.

“You okay to drive?” she asks me as I fumble with my car keys.

“I had, like, half a beer,” I tell her.

“Yeah, and you’re Lydia Chass, so I’m still asking. Also, it was more like a quarter of a beer because I think some of it came out your nose.”

I give up on my keys and sit on the hood of my car, looking down at Bristal, who is hugging her knees as the wind kicks up a notch. I can hear a TV from the trailer next to theirs, a loud snore coming from another one across the gravel pathway.

“Your mom kind of broke me,” I admit. “How long have you known about Dover and my dad?”

“It’s always been like a family joke. Free lawyer. Who needs that more than the Jamisons? But I got curious in high school, asked Mom about it, and she told me the story about Dover taking the fall for your dad.”

“How do you not hate me?” I ask, my voice small and lost in the dark, tree branches creaking around us as someone screams from the television nearby.

“I kinda did, for a little bit,” she admits with a shrug. “But I saw how much having a lawyer for a dad blew back at you. Like the Pascale chick dumping her lunch over your head, and dicks like Childress. I just kind of figured you’d crawl through your shit. I’d crawl through mine.”

“Not everyone would see it that way,” I tell her.

Bristal belches and reaches up to take a half-hearted swing at the punching bag. “Mom kinda broke me, too—a whorehouse, in Henley?!”

“Tell me about it!” I say, happy to let her change the subject.