Page 23 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
“Can we change the subject?”
The phone was gone, but there was still an email pinned to the top of his account on the off chance Phae chose to log in and snoop. He’d written all the things he wished he could tell her in person—a rambling essay of apologies, life updates, and regrets that he added to whenever he’d had a drink or two.
Meanwhile, her cell number had been out of service for a decade, and his emails to her bounced back.
“What was Phae like growing up?” Serena asked. “As a person, I mean.”
“Strong. Wilful.” Another laugh. “A better actor than me. When we were kids, she was a real tomboy, always climbing trees and ripping holes in her pants. Her dad used to take us hunting, but when she hit her teens and turned out to be a better shot than he was, he decided she should stay at home and focus on more traditional hobbies for a woman. Cooking, sewing, that type of thing.”
“From what you’ve said, I can’t see her enjoying that.”
“She hated it. She started baking laxatives into his food. Not enough to send him sprinting to the bathroom after dinner, but enough that he thought he had IBS. The man went through four doctors and even had a camera stuck up his ass, but none of them ever worked out what was wrong.”
“Wasn’t that a little mean, doing that to her own father?”
“If you’d met Rex Roebuck, you would’ve done the same. And when she wasn’t sneaking over to my place at night, she used to stay up altering his clothes. Nothing drastic, just half an inch here and there so he figured he was putting on weight. He hired a personal trainer and shit himself out jogging one day.”
“That’s… She has the mind of an evil genius.”
“Yeah, she does.”
“I’m really sorry it didn’t work out.”
“So am I. But now when I look back on things, I see that we were doomed from the day her father died.”
“The way you speak about him, I would’ve thought his passing was a good thing.”
“It would have been if her older brother hadn’t killed Rex and himself in the process.”
“What?”
“I’m not one hundred percent certain, but maybe eighty-five.”
“What happened?”
“Rex was grooming Booker to take over the family business, after he served his three years, of course. They were on their way home from North Platte after a meeting.”
“What kind of business?”
“Real estate. He started out as an estate planning lawyer, then discovered it was more profitable if he owned the property himself. In New York, he would’ve been called a slumlord, but in Nebraska, he was just a ‘prominent local businessman.’ Anyhow, Booker was driving that night when their vehicle hit a tree.”
“You think Booker crashed deliberately?”
“The Army screwed with his head. He should have been seeing a therapist for his PTSD, but Rex didn’t believe in therapy. Well, apart from conversion therapy, which meant Booker was so far into the closet that you’d have needed a search party to find him.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Welcome to my life. Booker was never going to be who his father wanted him to be—a loving husband with an obedient wife and five kids to carry on the family line. Phae wasn’t maternal, and Huck gets nervous talking to new people, especially women.”
“What did Rex think of you?”
“He thought Phae could do better. He only agreed to pay for her college on the condition that I stayed behind in Abundance. I would have done it too, for her.”
“What happened to the company after he died?”
“Phae helped Kitty to sell Rex’s car collection to fund renovations. A manager runs things, and they haven’t put the rent up a cent since the day that asshole died. A final ‘fuck you’ to the man we all grew to hate, although Kitty would never use those exact words.”
“Phae sounds like quite a woman.”
