Chapter 22: I'm Sorry I Made You Easy

"I'm not going," I said again. "Not without you."

Simone turned around at last.

Her eyes were wet in the light from the parish hall door.

"Dean, they're your family."

"They're my family, and you're staying where I can see you."

"You said that to me once and then you went out the door."

"That was a fight. This isn't one."

I kept my hand on the car door.

"Ask me again in a week if you want. I'll say the same thing."

She stared at me.

Behind her the hall door banged open.

My mother came across the gravel in her blue dress with no coat on.

My father came after her, and then both my aunts, and my uncle from Sandusky, and after them half the room.

Simone took her hand off the car.

"Dean," my mother said.

She stopped a yard from me, and she was shaking.

"I want to say this where everyone can hear it," she said. "I don't want it said in a kitchen."

"Mom, you don't have to."

"Be quiet, I have to."

She drew herself up.

"For ten Sundays I put a box in your hand, and I cried when you lost."

She looked around at the aunts.

"I took a girl's word over my son's face. When you stood up at my table and said something was wrong, I told you to apologize to your brother."

Nobody in the parking lot made a sound.

"You were the only person in that house asking a true question," she said.

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