Page 73 of Brenna, Brat

“I think you produce very handsome items,” he told me. “I would be happy to model your clothes at my office.”

“Thanks, Dad. Thanks for looking at my business plan, too. I’ve been putting it off, but I’m going to really make a push to start designing for real. I feel like it’s now or never.” And I could take other people into account when I sewed, I’d decided, and pay attention to their wants and needs. I was going to try to do that more in my life in general.

“You have a lot of years ahead of you,” he advised. “If this doesn’t work right now, it doesn’t mean that it’s over forever.”

“Like how you and Mom could get back together? It might not be over.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “That’s between the two of us,” he said, and wouldn’t elaborate. His statement was kind of true, except their decisions affected all of us—including stupid Dion, my mom’s new son. This was my day off and I was meeting him next, since he’d been texting and asking to see me since we’d returned downstate, and I’d finally given in. Oddly, he’d suggested going to a little restaurant on the same street as where the gallery had been, the place that we had previously bought sandwiches for lunch. He’d often had no money…anyway, that was where I was headed now.

I parked near where I always used to leave my car, and then before going to the deli, I walked to the cordoned-off area where our building had stood. Most of the rubble had been cleared away, and the businesses on either side were under construction and being repaired. Nothing was happening in this particular place, though. It was very quiet and also very sad.

“Hi.”

I looked over at Dion, who had approached nervously, in a slinking way. “Hello,” I said.

“It’s a mess here.” He also looked at where we’d worked, where there had been a pretty building filled with weird art and junk. “It’s funny to think how quickly things changed. I would have stayed there forever delivering my aunt’s drugs and playing on my phone.”

“I’m sorry this happened but I think it’s better for you,” I answered. “It’s better for me, too. We were stuck in a rut and neither of us was happy.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “And I got a new job.”

“Really?Where?”

He told me about it as we walked to the restaurant. He sounded excited, which was not an emotion I would have previously associated with him and work. “I’m still going to live with Mom,” he told me. “I mean, Jackie. But when my lease runs out, we’re going to move up north. I’ll have some real experience on my résumé by that point so I can get a good job up there, too.”

“You’re moving? And who is ‘we?’” I asked suspiciously. “Do you mean you andmymom?”

“Me and Carrington,” he corrected. “Jackie is going to stay in her house forever, hoping for your dad to come home. She already put everything back in his office there, trying to duplicate how it used to be. The meditation room is gone.”

I hardly heard the last part. “You and Carrington are moving in together?”

“Not for a while. She’s looking at jobs she can do remotely,” he explained. “It would be better for her to live somewhere else.”

We sat down at a table, and I needed the chair because I was stunned. “Dion, you two hooked up less than a week ago,” I reminded him. It had been a long few days, with Campbell away in Texas. He hadn’t seemed to want to talk to me much, which I understood. He probably didn’t feel like he could disclose anything from his meeting with his lawyer, and he was probably also embarrassed by what had happened up north. So was I.

Dion shrugged. “When you know, you know. Carrington is it, and I was screwing around and wasting time before I met her. But Mom told me to give it a while, not to rush. That’s why I’m not moving out.”

Her advice to slow down was interesting, since she’d married my dad about five minutes after meeting him.

“It will be good to live separately and date, that’s what Mom says. We’re having Carrington over for dinner tonight.” He looked extremely excited. “We’re making pasta with pesto for her. She’s worth washing all that basil, because she’s amazing.”

“When you know, you know,” I echoed. I was glad for them, in a cautionary way that made me question if they’d make it much past the pesto dinner. And I was even sorrier for myself, which was probably a new low for humanity.

“Her dad is taking all the blame,” he mentioned.

“What?”

“Ghregg Bates is going to come out and say that he acted alone. With a few of the other higher-ups and with a few people at the accounting firm, but he’s going to say that his kids weren’t in on it,” he explained. “Carrington is surprised.”

Surprised? I was shocked, and sure that I didn’t understand correctly. “What?”

“Yeah, he’s going to man up. He’s been planning it for a while, that he’s going to swoop in like a hero and fix everything.”

“What?” I asked a third time. I had him explain again, and I learned that this was information from Carrington’s attorney. She had shared it with Dion after avoiding conversations with her own brother for weeks. “You mean, Ghregg is doing something selfless for people?” I asked, still totally taken aback. This had been the secret plot that Campbell had sensed?

“Not completely selfless,” Dion answered. “He’s nailing a vice-president to the wall, and that woman worked for him for twenty years. But he’s going to announce publicly that his children weren’t involved and that he’s the mastermind. Carrie doesn’t think that he liked anyone else getting credit. She doesn’t think anyone will believe him, anyway, and people will still question her.”

“You call her ‘Carrie?’ And who gives a crap what other people think?”

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