Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 107949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
He had been up late the night before talking on the phone and pacing. So I just nuzzled the side of his neck and snaked my arms around his waist, taking his weight onto myself again.
“Hey, who were you talking to last night?” I kept my voice quiet.
“Hmm? Oh, my nephew.” He sighed.
“You talk to him a lot, huh? Something up?”
“Uh, Claire. My sister. Sometimes she… leaves without telling Nathan and Sarah where she’s going.”
His weight against my shoulder grew heavier.
“She leaves?”
“Yeah.” He sighed, and I tightened my arms around him. “She’s bipolar—well, she hates that term, thinks it’s bullshit, but she was diagnosed just after high school.”
“Sorry, I’m not sure I know what that means, exactly.”
“Well, it varies a lot. But for Claire… she always had these periods of being really manic. Not sleeping, planning these grand projects or adventures. Her teachers used to send notes home that said she should be checked for ADHD, but my parents never paid attention. When we were younger, she’d do all her school projects for a month in one week, or clean the house from top to bottom. Once, she borrowed a friend’s car and drove to Kansas without sleeping because she was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz. Then, when she got back, she slept for like forty-eight hours straight and wouldn’t come out of her room for the next week. Stuff like that.”
“Oh man. That does sound like it’d be really hard for kids.” I made sure to keep my voice calm and low so Will wouldn’t move out of my arms.
He nodded and sighed. He sounded so tired, and I wondered how many times this had happened before. I kind of couldn’t believe he’d never mentioned something so huge.
“Sometimes she’ll go to the store and buy hundreds of dollars of groceries and cook for days until she has so much food it won’t even fit in the freezer. And sometimes she takes off and doesn’t tell Nathan and Sarah where she’s going. So, they call me and I call around and try and track her down, but really she just comes back when she’s ready. She leaves them food and money. But, you know. They’re kids. They get scared.”
“Yeah, of course.” Nathan was ten and Sarah was only eight. “Can anyone help out? What about Nathan and Sarah’s dad?”
“Dads. No. There’s no one else.”
“Your parents, maybe—”
“No.” Will’s voice was poisonous and his whole body tensed against me. He’d never even mentioned his parents before. “They couldn’t be fucked to take care of their own kids; they certainly don’t give a shit about their grandkids. Besides, they’re useless. They’re worse than children.”
I started to ask about his parents, but Will pulled away and went to the kitchen, taking a beer out of the refrigerator. He held it up to me on offer, but I shook my head. I still didn’t like the taste.
“Then sometimes… she does other things. Like….” Will bit his lip and sat down on the couch, tucking his knees up. It made him look uncharacteristically young. Uncertain. I sat down, folding my forearms over his knees and resting my chin on them.
“Like she’ll drive to Detroit and meet up with these randoms she knows and get wasted in a hotel room for three days. Or she’ll bring some guy home and tell Nathan and Sarah that she’s in love and she wants them to meet her new boyfriend. I mean, these are guys she’s known for like a week. And of course they never stick around. Sometimes they get scared off by the fact that she has kids, or she comes on too strong. And if not that, then she gets bored of them after a few weeks. Or a few days. Not a single one of them has lasted more than two months. And it’s fine for her. But Nathan and Sarah….”
I wrapped my arms around his legs, curling around him. He sipped his beer, and his other hand came to rest on my hair.
“Well, I think they know the score by now. But when they were younger they used to call me and say, like, ‘we have a new friend,’ or, god, the worst, ‘we have a new dad.’ And when I’d tell Claire to quit introducing these guys to them… depending on her mood, sometimes she’d tell me how this guy was different. He was the one she’d spend her life with. Her soul mate. Or she’d be furious with me. Accuse me of thinking she was a loser who no one would want to stick around for. So there was no point.”
Will shook his head, staring out the window into the dark. I took the empty beer bottle from him and slid it onto the coffee table, then I pulled him up toward me. He came into my arms easily, even if he grumbled a bit as he did it.