Page 8 of The Wrong Family

“Samuel!” she said, exasperated. “Come on. Now you’re just being ridiculous. You’ve had a hundred veggie burgers.”

“And I’ve never liked them.”

She replaced her sandwich on the plate and stared at him. “So you’re just not going to eat them anymore?”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m going to eat meat from now on because I’m not a vegetarian.”

The food she’d already ingested rolled in her belly. Winnie felt sick. She’d spent thirteen years raising this boy in what she thought was the best way, and now he was dismissing their way of life so casually, like it didn’t mean anything.

“We’ll talk about it later. If you’re not hungry that’s fine, but your dad—”

“I am hungry. I ate all the chips and I’m still hungry.”

She knew that if she told him to eat his veggie burger the argument would continue and spoil what was left of the evening.

Samuel was scrolling through his phone now, and she noticed that he was reading an article in theSeattle Timesabout the homeless.

“Do you want dessert?” she asked, pushing her burger aside. His only response was to raise a curious eyebrow like he was being pranked. She lifted a finger to call the server over, her eyes never leaving his face.

“Can we have one of every dessert on the menu, to share?” she said, glancing at Samuel. His face was incredulous. “So long as they don’t have meat in them.”

He cracked a small smile.Truce!Winnie thought.

“Don’t you want to see the menu…?” the server asked. Winnie’s smile broke for a brief second. Hadn’t this stupid girl heard her? She was trying to be the cool mom. “Just one of everything,” she snapped. The girl nodded and walked away. Her expression saidIt’s on your dime, salty bitch.

“What are you reading?” Winnie asked.

“Nothing. Something for school.” He immediately closed the browser on his phone and set it face down on the table.

“You know, I used to work with the homeless, for my job, before you were born.” She expected him to ignore her, or—cue her personal least favorite—roll his eyes, but instead, he looked at her with interest.

“In what capacity?”

Capacity!Winnie almost snickered, but she knew how much that would offend Samuel. When she was his age, she certainly wasn’t saying words likecapacity.Besides, she was used to his large vocabulary. She kept her face neutral.

“Well, I was a case manager for people with mental health issues. Some of my cases were…well…homeless.”

“Really? How old were they?”

Now that she had his attention, she didn’t plan on losing it. She shrugged as nonchalantly as possible. “All different ages, some as young as you, all the way up to people Granny’s age.”

“Why were they homeless?”

Winnie searched her mind for a good answer, one that would interest him.

“I had one guy, his name was Adam. He came up to Seattle when he was twenty-four, right after getting out of jail. He beat a guy up, that’s why he was in jail,” Winnie said, seeing the question on Samuel’s face. “He’d gone to school to be an engineer—before the fight and the jail time. But by the time he got out, his mom had disowned him, and he had no other family in the area.”

“So, nowhere to go,” Samuel concluded.

“That’s right. He came to Seattle because he heard he could get work up here, but the job didn’t pan out, and so he was homeless.” There was a long pause during which Winnie thought he was done discussing the topic, but then he propped his birdlike elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hand. “Did he have a mental illness?”

“That’s none of your business,” Winnie said firmly. She could tell that switching to the mom role had cost her Samuel, because he looked away. She felt immediate regret. Should she have told him that Adam was diagnosed with schizophrenia and that on his twenty-sixth birthday he’d gone missing? The police hadn’t bothered to look for a homeless man, though they’d written up the report for Winnie and then told her to have a nice day.

“They have a very hard time, Samuel,” she offered gently. “Discussing their medical history is highly inappropriate.” But he was giving her that look that made her feel stupid.

“That was like fifteen years ago,” he said. “But it’s fine.”

“Thirteen,” Winnie corrected with a frown. “Don’t age me.” Samuel glanced up to check her face and seemed to relax at the joke. Winnie was sweating beneath her shirt. She hadn’t realized how hard this would be—parenting. People, for some reason, chose only to highlight the good parts: the cute chubby cheeks and cute little socks—not the temper tantrums and lollipop bribery it took to get them in the socks. Winnie tried to relax, softening her voice. “And you’re right. Adam was mentally ill. He also had PTSD from an incident in prison—” Winnie didn’t tell Samuel how violent theincidenthad actually been “—and he had a personality disorder and a bunch of other stuff.”

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