Chapter 3

“I did. Someone dinged me in the hospital parking lot. I’ve got white paint smears along the passenger side in the front.”

“Did you report it?”

“To who? I don’t know who did it.”

“You look for the white car with black paint marks on it,” my dad said as he entered. He went straight to the counter where Mom was sprinkling more fake parmesan cheese across the top of the casserole and stuck his nose in the rising steam. “Mmmmm, that smells good. So what are the rest of you eating?”

Mom laughed—as she always did—and Dad poured drinks for everyone as I finished with the table setting. My life was one big dance where everybody always made the same steps, to the same music, to the same mediocre score at the end of the night. We’d altered our rhythms every time another one of my brothers moved out—I had two in total—but it had been the three of us for almost six years now. We pretty much had it perfected.