“You haven’t learned a thing,” she said. “So I guess you gave up on the idea of going into private security.”
“That was your idea, Ally, not mine.”
“The department must have offered you something great to keep you from the private sector. What did they do, make you the head of the MCU?”
“They put me in charge of a community substation in Darwin Gardens.”
She stared at him in shock. “That’s a hellhole.”
“Pretty much,” he said.
“Don’t you see what they’re doing? It’s retribution, Tom. They are trying to humiliate you or, more likely, get you killed for what you did.”
“That’s not how I see it,” he said.
“I’ll remember that at your funeral,” she said. “Next month.”
“The job gives me a salary that allows me to support my family, pay the mortgage on this house, and still have a little bit left over to take care of myself. It also comes with a health plan that will cover Brooke’s orthodontia, among other things. I can’t do that working campus security at a college.”
“But that’s not why you took the demotion.”
“Lateral move,” he said.
“Whatever.” She kept staring at him.
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
She shook her head with disappointment. “We’re divorced, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped caring about you, Tom. I’d make whatever sacrifices I had to-I’d sell this house without a second thought-if it would keep you from taking a job that’s suicide to pay our bills. But there’s nothing I can do to save you from your own twisted sense of honor.”
That’s when Brooke came out of the house, marching up purposefully behind her mother. She was tall and thin like her mother, with a runner’s slim, muscular legs and long hair tied in a ponytail that fell almost to her waist.
There was an adorable band of freckles across her nose and cheeks that gave her a huggable cuteness that was dramatically undercut by the mature intensity of her brown eyes, narrowed now in a stony gaze. Wade could see himself and his father in that gaze, and he was pretty sure that Alison could too.
“I hope you two aren’t fighting again,” Brooke said.
“We’re not,” Alison said. “I was just telling your father that I’m concerned about him.”
“I am too,” Brooke said. “You look terrible, Dad.”
“So I’ve heard,” he said. “But you know what would really help?”
“Two Advils and some concealer?”
“A big hug and a kiss,” Wade said and crouched down so she could run into his open arms. She groaned at the request because he was treating her like a child, but she gave him what he wanted, hugging him tight and kissing him on the cheek.
“I know you won’t take the makeup,” Brooke said into his ear, “but I would still recommend the Advil.”
He looked over her shoulder at Alison. “I’ll have her back by dinnertime.”
“There’s no hurry,” Alison said. “It’s not a school night.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got the night shift,” Wade said.
“Of course you do,” she said. “I’ll bet that you even volunteered for it.”
“I assigned it to myself,” he said.
“Of course you did,” she said, turned her back to him, and walked into the house.
Chapter twenty one
Thirty minutes later, sitting in a crowded theater at the Clayton Commons shopping center, he wished that he’d followed Brooke’s advice and taken those Advils.
The movie Brooke dragged him to was one of those big?budget comic book adaptations where good?looking people in colorful costumes tried to work out their superficial super?angst by throwing cars at each other and making as much noise as possible.
It gave Wade a splitting headache. He closed his eyes, which seemed to help, and it put him right to sleep. Wade slumped down in his seat, spilling the kernels and crumbs that remained at the bottom of his popcorn bag all over his lap.
Brooke wasn’t offended by her father napping through the movie. He’d obviously needed the rest and she was glad just to be with him. But she was thankful that his snores were drowned out by the cacophony of super?heroic destruction, sparing her embarrassment if any of her friends happened to be in the audience.
She nudged him awake over the closing credits. He blinked hard, sat up in his seat, and rolled his head to work out a kink in his neck.
“Sorry that I fell asleep,” he said, wiping the crumbs off his lap. “Are you mad at me?”
She shook her head. “I’m glad you slept through the movie. It made it a lot less awkward for me to watch the blow?job scenes.”
“Shhh,” Wade said, looking around. “I know there weren’t any sex scenes in this movie because superheroes don’t have sex. They fly around instead. And you shouldn’t be using words like that.”
“Like blow job?” she said, smiling with amusement.
“It’s not something thirteen?year?old girls should be saying.”
“But there are plenty of thirteen?year?old girls giving them.”
“I hope you’re not one of them.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying that asking me not to use the word doesn’t mean that I don’t know about oral sex or that you’re protecting my innocence.”
“I know that, believe me. I see the harsh realities of life every day. But you were just using the word for shock value.”
“And it worked,” she said. “You’re wide?awake now.”
They walked out of the theater into the Commons, a shopping center designed to look like a quaint European village that just happened to be in the middle of Washington State.
The center was a bizarre mishmash of architectural cues-a Danish windmill atop a pharmacy, a German half?timbered facade on a grocery store, an Italian cafe facade on a Subway franchise, and an assortment of French colonnes, stand?alone pillars topped with onion?shaped iron domes that displayed wraparound advertising for things like discount bikini waxes.
Wade and Brooke went for lunch at Panda Express, which had a Spanish?Moorish facade, and sat at a table outside, facing a small lake filled with ducks and a three?story Big Ben replica with an enormous Rolex clock face that was the centerpiece of the Commons.
The center was remarkably clean, and the pressed concrete sidewalks, made to look like aged but inexplicably shiny cobblestones, gleamed in the afternoon sun.
“Where do you live?” Brooke asked.
It was a topic he’d been hoping to avoid, especially with Alison, though he knew he couldn’t evade the issue for long. But he needed time to settle in and then figure out the best way to present it to the two of them.
“I’d rather talk about you,” Wade said.
“Besides my parents splitting up, and having my first period, my life hasn’t changed much,” she said. “I live in the same house, I go to the same school every day, I get good grades, and I often wonder what’s happening with my dad.”
“You can call me anytime,” he said.
“The same goes for you,” she said. “But I’m always the one who calls.”
“I’ve been busy and distracted, that’s all. I miss you very much. The hardest thing for me to live with has been not coming home to you each night and having breakfast with you every morning.”
“But at least you can picture what I’m doing,” she said. “What my world is like, where I am, what I am up to.
