"Of course I'm your mother. I'll always be your mother. But you're such a good girl, you hardly need any mothering. You need cheering up."

Janet leaned toward her, plucked the ice cream out of her hand, and scooped out the last good marshmallow stripe. "Isn't it better than getting a lecture?" she asked.

"Yes," Amber said, with some trepidation.

"You don't sound so sure. Haven't you ever done girl talk before? You dish, and then I give you all kinds of useless advice, and then we mock him for a while until we're giggling and you go home and take a shower and pull yourself together. You'll feel better after, I promise."

She looked at her mother, dressed in those impractical clothes, with her sympathetic eyes and mischievous smile.

Why not? She thought. Why the h.e.l.l not?

"Okay."

"Oh, good." Janet leaned toward her. "Now tell me what happened in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

Chapter Thirteen.

Tony kept away from the community center all morning, messing around with paperwork in the office until he ran out of excuses not to do his job.

He drove the fifteen miles from Mount Pleasant to Camelot at a crawl. When he got there, the blonde was behind the desk, and Amber was nowhere in sight.

He found Patrick hanging sheetrock in the meeting room closest to the old part of the building, holding the panel up while a nineteen-year-old college dropout named Casey pounded in the nails.

Tony usually had Casey pushing a broom. He never gave him work that involved skill. The kid didn't know his a.s.s from apple b.u.t.ter.

"What are you doing?"

Patrick gave him a wry look. "Hanging rock."

"Where are Rick and Matt?" Tony asked. His regular sheetrock guys had been scheduled to come in this morning.

"They didn't show," Patrick said.

"Neither of them?"

"Right."

"Jesus. Did you call them?"

"No. Where have you been?"

"In the office."

The sheetrock needed to get done by Wednesday, and Patrick had only three panels up. Tony and Patrick working together could have finished the whole room inside of two hours. Rick and Matt were even faster.

"How long you been at it?"

Patrick looked at Casey, and the kid shrugged. "I don't know, since ten?"

Three and a half hours.

"Casey, you can take five. I'll handle this."

The kid handed Tony his hammer.

"Where are the nails?"

Casey pointed to a box on the other side of the room.

"What the f.u.c.k? Bring them over here. When your break's over, go clean the floor in the aerobics room. Somebody's been walking on it with dirty boots again."

Tony took over pounding nails through the panels into the joists. It felt good to hit something. He'd spent the past two days filled with restless violence.

"Dude, where'd you go this weekend?" Patrick asked. "Cathy said she called you during the storm and you weren't home. I called three times yesterday."

"I was here during the storm. Working late."

And I was home all weekend, pacing holes in the living room carpet like a caged animal.

His brother shifted beneath the panel, finding a better position for his hand. "You had to go down into the bas.e.m.e.nt with the lights out?"

"Yeah."

"That sucks. Was it just you, or-no, that director girl would've still been here, huh? I bet that was interesting. She try to jump your bones?"

"Shut up."

The warning in his voice made Patrick look over. Tony watched him leap to the logical conclusion.

"You were holed up with the director girl, huh?"

"Her name's Amber. And no. I was home all weekend. I didn't answer the phone because I didn't want to talk."

"Touchy."

Tony hammered without saying anything, hoping Patrick would take the hint and leave him alone.

Between blows, he heard the faint, intermittent buzz of a chainsaw. Amber must have called somebody to pull the limb off her car and cut it up.

Her voice came through from the other side of the plastic.

"No, Kim was supposed to take that shift. Give her a call, okay?"

"That girl is cute," Patrick said. "With the whistle and all. Amber, huh? She gave me half her sandwich at lunchtime."

Tony pounded another nail into the joist.

"I think she likes me. Maybe I'll see if she wants to go out this weekend. Take her to that place in Danville where they do the line dancing."

"If you lay a finger on her, I will kill you with my bare hands."

A huff of laughter. "That's what I thought," Patrick said.

"f.u.c.k you."

"She any good? She looks like she might not know which end is up."

He gripped the hammer so hard, his fingers started to ache. "Seriously, Patrick, shut the f.u.c.k up."

Her voice drifted into the room again.

"... big galvanized tin bucket we used for the Halloween party? It might be big enough. I'm not sure. I can take a look later, after ..."

He couldn't take this. Couldn't hear her, see her, talk about her.

Coward.

"We're starting that job at the church tomorrow," he said. "I'm going to be there a lot. I want you to take over here. Keep the crew in line. Quit jerking around all morning hanging three panels of sheetrock."

He hammered in the last nail, and Patrick let go of the panel, rolling his shoulders and staring at Tony with a set jaw. "We talked about this."

"I know, but you have to do more. There's too much work for me to be in charge of it all."

"So hire somebody. Mom says there's enough money."

"I already have you."

Patrick shook his head. "We talked about this," he repeated. "I don't want the responsibility, and n.o.body wants an ex-con in charge of their construction site."

"You work hard, you do a good job. If people have a problem with it, they can bring it to me."

"I have a problem with it."

Tony took two steps and got right in his brother's face before he even knew he was angry. "What the f.u.c.k, Patrick? You gonna go on like this forever, pretending to be a n.o.body meathead ex-con? You're smarter than that. You should be running this f.u.c.king company."

His brother's eyes narrowed. "I never wanted to run the company."

"Well, what did you want? Why aren't you doing it?"

The questions came out of him with so much force, Tony felt as if he'd toppled over on the inside. As if he couldn't get his feet back under him and his entire body was aching, shaky and sick. Something in his blood. Something really wrong with him.

Patrick's face flushed red. "Back off, Tony."

"You're always telling me that. Back off, Tony. Leave me be. I can handle my own s.h.i.t.' But look at you. You haven't done anything since you got out of jail. You're a b.u.m. I can't count on you to even call the G.o.dd.a.m.n crew when they don't come in, or to tell me about it so I can call them myself."

"Don't expect me to read your mind. You're p.i.s.sed at me because you f.u.c.ked that girl, and now you want me to take over the site so you don't have to see her. I never thought you were such a p.u.s.s.y."

"This isn't about me," he said. "It's about you. It's about your future."

"Not today, it isn't."

Tony's mouth clamped shut, his nostrils flaring as he tried to get a handle on the sudden pressure in his sinuses.

"Forget it," he said. "We need more rock. Why aren't all the panels in here already?"

"Casey's idea. If we get them as we need them, we can take a little break between each one."

"Waste of f.u.c.king time." Tony stalked into the hall, heading toward the curtain and out the side door, where they had more sheetrock on a truck.

"... talk to Rosalie here about arranging private swim lessons ..."

Amber was right outside the curtain. He froze. He didn't want her to see him like this, flayed open with anger.

"You going or not?" his brother said from behind him.

He went.

When she saw him, her eyes widened as if she thought he might pounce on her and hurt her, and that made it worse. He would never hurt her.

Not any more than he already had.

"Hi," she said.

He paused. But what could he say? If he opened his mouth, it would all spill out.

He nodded at her and kept going, walking fast out the door, slamming into it with both hands and pushing into the sunlight, sucking down the fresh air as if he were dying or drowning.

Jesus.

He kept walking for a minute, unable to give up his momentum. By the time he stopped, he was a hundred feet away from the building at the edge of the kids' soccer fields.

He looked at the sky, hands behind his head, breathing hard.

Get a grip.

What was he even angry about?

Patrick was being Patrick. He'd been like that since the accident.

He didn't take responsibility because he didn't think he deserved to be forgiven-that was what everybody said. Even though Tony and the rest of the family had forgiven him years ago, he wouldn't accept it. He wouldn't move forward. He was stuck in the past.