Chapter 86

“Which I’m surprised you haven’t paid off somehow. This rain of gifts has been a very cold shower.”

His arrogance, that he’s being slowly acclimated to a different hemisphere, is a punch. But I fell into a trap of my own composition. Mrs. Stone didgive him things, something new for his closet, something new for his bookshelf, was it to camouflage the something old in his bed? He’s far from done. “This is your version at starting over until you face a co-op board and you rejoin the cognoscenti. That sad kid asleep in there doesn’t fit into that. You aren’t going to give up a thing.”

“Life’s complex. Walk a mile in my shoes!”

“I have, remember? You bought me the same exact ones.”

I made that too easy. “I would pile high every one of my material comforts for just one hour with Andy! I would surrender every cent I will ever have to bury my face into the neck of one of my dogs! I also know my wishes can’t come true.”

“Because you’re the grown-up here.”