“So that’s it, then?” Jeremiah said.

Conrad didn’t answer him right away. Then he looked up and said, “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Well, great job taking care of all this, Con.”

“I’ve been handling this on my own,” Conrad snapped. “It’s not like I had any help from you.”

“Well, maybe if you’d told me about it—”

Conrad cut him off. “You’d have done what?”

“I would have talked to Dad.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Conrad could not have sounded more disdainful.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that you’re so busy being up his ass, you can’t see him for who he is.”

Jeremiah didn’t say anything right away, and I was really afraid of where this was heading. Conrad was looking for a fight and the last thing we needed was for the two of them to start wrestling on the kitchen floor, breaking things and each other. This time, my mother wasn’t here to stop them. There was just me, and that was hardly anything.

And then Jeremiah said, “He’s our father.” His voice was measured, even, and I let out a tiny breath of relief. There wouldn’t be any fight, because Jeremiah wouldn’t let it happen. I admired him for that.

But Conrad just shook his head in disgust. “He’s a dirtbag.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“What kind of guy cheats on his wife and then leaves her when she has cancer? What kind of man does that? I can’t even stand to look at him. He makes me sick, playing the martyr now, the grieving widower. But where was he when Mom needed him, huh, Jere?”

“I don’t know, Con. Where were you?”

The room went silent, and it felt to me like the air was almost crackling. The way Conrad flinched, the way Jeremiah sucked in his breath right after he said it. He wanted to take it back, I could tell, and he was about to, when Conrad said, conversationally, “That’s a low blow.”

“I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said.

Conrad shrugged, brushing him off like it didn’t matter either way.

And then Jeremiah said, “Why can’t you just let it go? Why do you have to hold on to all the shitty stuff that’s ever happened to you?”

“Because I live in reality, unlike you. You’d rather live in a fantasy world than see people for who they really are.” He said it in a way that made me wonder who he was really talking about.

Jeremiah bristled. He looked at me and then back at Conrad and said, “You’re just jealous. Admit it.”

“Jealous?”

“You’re jealous that Dad and I have an actual relationship now. It’s not just all about you anymore, and that kills you.”

Conrad actually laughed. It was a bitter, terrible sound. “That’s such BS.” He turned to me. “Belly, are you hearing this? Jeremiah thinks I’m jealous.”

Jeremiah looked at me, like, Be on my side , and I knew that if I did, he’d forgive me for not telling him about the house. I hated Conrad for putting me in the middle, for making me choose. I didn’t know whose side I was on. They were both right and they were both wrong.

I guess I took too long to answer, because Jeremiah stopped looking at me and said, “You’re an asshole, Conrad. You just want everyone to be as miserable as you are.” And then he walked out. The front door slammed behind him.

I felt like I should go after him. I felt like I had just let him down when he needed me most.

Then Conrad said to me, “Am I an asshole, Belly?” He popped open another beer and he was trying to sound so indifferent, but his hand was shaking.

“Yeah,” I said. “You really are.”

I walked over to the window and I watched Jeremiah getting into his car. It was too late to follow him; he was already pulling out of the driveway. Even though he was pissed, he had his seat belt on.

“He’ll be back,” Conrad said.

I hesitated and then I said, “You shouldn’t have said that stuff.”

“Maybe not.”

“You shouldn’t have asked me to keep it a secret from him.”

Conrad shrugged like he was already over it, but then he looked back toward the window and I knew he was worried. He threw me a beer and I caught it. I popped the top off and took a long drink. It hardly even tasted bad. Maybe I was getting used to it. I smacked my lips loudly.

He watched me, and there was a funny look on his face. “So you like beer now, huh?”

I shrugged. “It’s all right,” I said, and I felt very grown-up. But then I added, “I still like Cherry Coke better though.”

He almost smiled when he said, “Same old Belly. I bet if we cut your body open, white sugar would come pouring out of you.”

“That’s me,” I said. “Sugar and spice and everything nice.”

Conrad said, “I don’t know about that.”

And then we were both quiet. I took another sip of beer and set it down next to Conrad. “I think you really hurt Jeremiah’s feelings.”

He shrugged. “He needed a reality check.”

“You didn’t have to do it like that.”

“I think you’re the one who hurt Jeremiah’s feelings.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. If I asked him what he meant by that, he’d tell me. And I didn’t want him to. So I drank my beer and said, “What now?”

Conrad didn’t let me off the hook that easy. He said, “What now with you and Jeremiah or with you and me?”

He was teasing me and I hated him for it. I could feel my cheeks burning as I said, “What now with this house, was what I meant.”

He leaned back against the counter. “There’s nothing to do, really. I mean, I could get a lawyer. I’m eighteen now. I could try and stall. But I doubt it would do anything. My dad’s stubborn. And he’s greedy.”

Hesitantly, I said, “I don’t know that he’s doing it out of—out of greed, Conrad.”

Conrad’s face sort of closed off. “Trust me. He is.”

I couldn’t help but ask, “What about summer school?”

“I couldn’t care less about school right now.”

“But—”

“Just leave it, Belly.” Then he walked out of the kitchen, opened the sliding door, and went outside.

Conversation over.

chapter twenty-six

jeremiah

My whole life I’ve looked up to Conrad. He’s always been smarter, faster—just better. The thing is, I never really begrudged him that. He was just Conrad. He couldn’t help being good at things. He couldn’t help that he never lost in Uno or races or grades. Maybe part of me needed that, someone to look up to. My big brother, the guy who couldn’t lose.

But there was this time, when I was thirteen. We were wrestling around in the living room, had been for half an hour. My dad was always trying to get us to wrestle. He’d been on the wrestling team in college, and he liked teaching us new techniques. We were wrestling, and my mom was in the kitchen, cooking bacon-wrapped scallops because we were having people over that night and they were my dad’s favorite.

“Lock him in, Con,” my dad was saying.

We were really getting into it. We’d already knocked over one of my mom’s silver candlesticks. Conrad was breathing hard; he’d expected to beat me easily. But I was getting good; I wasn’t giving up. He had my head locked under his arm and then I locked his knee and we were both on the ground. I could feel something shift; I almost had him. I was going to win. My dad was gonna be so proud.

When I had him pinned, my dad said, “Connie, I told you to keep your knees bent.”

I looked up at my dad, and I saw the look on his face. He had that look he got sometimes when Conrad wasn’t doing something right, all tight around the eyes and irritated. He never looked at me like that.

He didn’t say, “Good job, Jere.” He just started criticizing Conrad, telling him all the things he could’ve done better. And Conrad took it. He was nodding, his face red, sweat pouring down his forehead. Then he nodded at me and said, in a way that I knew he really meant it, “Good job, Jere.”