“Even if he wants to go back to New Hampshire?”
“Even if,” I said.
Liar, it whispered.
THE KID was in love with Dominic.
I knew that.
I knew that.
It still took me by surprise.
But I was even more surprised when he started picking himself up.
Putting himself back together.
Piece by piece by piece.
I made sure he knew I was there.
But I still stepped back and let him do what he could on his own.
It hurt.
It was the right thing to do.
HE WENT back to therapy with Eddie Eagan.
I would have thought his license would have been revoked by now.
The damn beads still hung from the doorway.
And on and on it went.
WE CELEBRATED the Kid’s birthday.
My family plotted something against Gross Tree Bush Thing.
I had to step in to stop them because I loved it almost more than any of them.
“I WANT everything to go back the way it was,” he told me.
“It wasn’t always that great.”
“We had our moments, you and me.”
“We did, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, Papa Bear.”
“I’ll kill him, you know.”
That startled him. “What? Who?”
“Dominic.”
“Bear—”