Page 57 of Boston
Mav waited another moment to see if Jem needed to rant some more, and then he tried again. “Who’s the interview with tomorrow?”
“Someplace up outside of Dog Valley,” Jem said. “I guess they train rodeo animals.”
“Oh, well, that sounds like it might be great,” Mav said.
“Yeah, anything sounds great about now.”
Mav chuckled and said, “Wow, I don’t think Blaze is the only person in a bad mood today.”
“I’m fine,” Jem said.
“Oh, yeah? Really sounds like you are.”
A few seconds of silence passed, and then the air filled with the low chuckle of Blaze Young.
“Laugh it up,” Jem said. “Maybe you should tell us what’s going on with you, so we can laugh about it.”
Blaze sobered, and he had one of the deeper voices in the Young family, so Mav had a hard time hearing him when he said, “Mine is no laughing matter.”
“We won’t laugh at you,” Mav said.
“Did you know that the older kids have a cousin night?” Blaze asked.
“Yeah,” Jem said. “Everyone knows that.”
“But do you know why?” Blaze asked.
Mav hadn’t really thought about it. “Because they’re the same age,” he said. “There’s a big difference between someone like Boston, who’s twenty-three, and Tyrone, who’s four.”
And Ty wasn’t even Blaze’s youngest.
“They do it,” Blaze said in his dangerous, calculated tone that Mav didnotlike. “Because they feel left out. They feel like they don’t belong in our family. They get together, so that they have somewhere to belong.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not it,” Jem said. “Cole and Rosie go to those. It’s like movie night, and Harry orders a lot of pizza.”
“I’m telling you,” Blaze said.
“Then why?—?”
“Why do you think that?” Mav asked, covering Jem’s argument.
His brother’s hammock shifted, and Jem looked over to him. Mav shook his head, and Jem nodded.
“Because my son told me,” Blaze said, the words almost a whisper. “He’s going to be in town in July. He’s not staying with us.”
Mav waited, because while he knew Blaze would like his son to sleep in the basement for a month, that couldn’t be the reason he was so angry. Mav had watched Tex go through something similar when Bryce had come home and stayed with another uncle, unable to face his parents on a daily basis.
Boston had lived in Harry’s basement because he didn’t want to be “in the way” at Mav’s house. Mav had never thought it was because he felt like he didn’t belong, but maybe it was.
“He quit the rodeo,” Blaze said.
“He did what?” Jem asked, his voice practically a bellow through the backyard.
“At least for this year,” Blaze said. “He doesn’t know what he wants his life to be. He’s got a lot of fear and a lot of anger in him.”
“The rodeo is a dangerous place,” Mav said. “You’ve both worried about your kids going into it and getting injured.”
“Yeah,” Jem said. “That’s true.”
