Dale ignored that last point. “I don’t want to have anything to do with her. When is she coming?”
“Mid-August.”
“Just before the tour,” I said.
“Good. We’ll be gone soon after she arrives.” Dale resumed twirling his spaghetti around a fork. “It’s good timing.”
“What if I don’t go… on tour, I mean.”
Dale didn’t answer that. I knew he didn’t want to consider that as an option.
“Are you giving her my room?” I asked.
“No of course not,” John replied. “ I’ll dismantle the office, put most of it in my room or in storage. She’ll have her own room.”
“Is she flying?” Dale asked.
“No, your mother’s driving her and bringing all her stuff.”
“Great.” Dale put his fork down, pushing aay from the table. “Just great.”
“Aren’t you going to finish?” John asked as Dale got up.
“I just lost my appetite.” Dale walked out of the kitchen and started upstairs.
John sighed. “I guess I should have waited to tell him until after dinner.”
“I’m going to go upstairs too.” I put my fork down. “I’m sorry, John.”
“Go on.I’ll clean up.” John waved me on. “He’ll raid the fridge at midnight.”
Of course he was right.
“Dale?” I called, slowly opening the door to our room.
He was face down on the bed, words muffled, but I understood them anyway.
“I can’t do it. I can’t be in the same room with them. They’re just going to pretend like nothing happened. And fucking Chrissy. She knows! She knows damned well and she’s going to take advantage of him anyway.”
“John thinks she’s his daughter,” I reminded him.
“Thinks is the optimum word there.”
“Okay fine. So she isn’t really his daughter.” I sat next to him on the bed. “What about me? He took me in and he loves me. He treats me like a daughter. Why would he treat Chrissy any differently—even if he did know?”
“Because you’re not the result of an affair with his best friend.”
He had a point. What would John do, if he knew?
I remembered the first time I’d found out Dale had a sister who lived in Maine with his estranged mother. It had been enough of a shock to discover that Tyler Vincent, the man I’d worshipped from afar, whose music I listened to constantly, whose videos I stayed up late and waited for on MTV, whose movies I attended religiously on opening day, just happened to be John’s best friend. They’d met before Tyler became a star, back when Tyler was teaching music at the University of Maine, the same place John had been teaching English.
Then Dale had told me an even deeper secret, one John didn’t know—Dale and his sister, Chrissy, weren’t John’s biological children. His mother had been involved with Tyler twenty years ago, a torrid affair—and she continued to have an affair with him, according to Dale, even though both she and Tyler remained married to other people. Dale’s mother had finally asked for a divorce—Dale said she was convinced Tyler was going to finally leave his wife for her, but he didn’t—and still, she never told John about the affair. Or the fact that his children weren’t, in fact, his.
o;That’s what I said.” I shrugged. “It would be hard to just pick up and go. Then again, I miss him when he’s gone, so… I don’t know.”
“Well I’m sure he’s rolling in the dough by now.” Josh sounded bitter. “You probably won’t need this job for long anyway.”
“Oh he hasn’t seen any royalties yet. He won’t for quite a while.”