“I’m sorry that my mom practically forced you to stay here,” she said. “Sometimes she won’t take no for an answer. Earlier tonight she called me into the house because she and my aunt Cherie, who’s a lawyer, thought it was important to team up and convince me again that I should think about law school.”
“Why law school?”
“Because lawyers make more money than I do.” She sighed. “The Greenes are successful. That’s what is expected. I am trying to be successful, but I guess it’s hard to realize that given everything my sisters have accomplished. I’ve never been as impressive as they are. I don’t love my job, but I make the best of it because publishing positions are so hard to get in the first place.”
“I think you’re impressive.” He hated to hear her talk about herself this way. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Everyone is different. Not being like your sisters doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You’re special too, maybe even more so.”
I’ve never met your sisters, so I can’t make a comparison, but you sound impressive to me.
He’d written that to her in an email. Well, now he’d met both of her sisters. But he’d still choose Lily. He’d choose her over anyone.
“Thanks for saying that,” she said. “I don’t blame my mom for wanting better for me. She wants me to have a secure life. She hates that I’m living on Violet’s couch. Don’t get me wrong, I love my sister and I’m grateful I have a place to crash but I do want a legitimate space of my own. In a few months I’ll have enough saved.” She shot him a rueful smile. “That means I won’t be your neighbor anymore.”
Nick felt a pang at her words. No longer living in the same building as Lily was what he should want. It would make their situation much less complicated. But he’d miss her.
“You and your family remind me of another family I met a while ago,” he said, thinking of the Davidses in Amsterdam. “I could tell that they genuinely loved each other. It was really wholesome.”
“You should hear Iris and Violet when they argue. They’re definitely the opposite of wholesome then.” She paused. “Do you and your family get together often?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t seen my parents in almost five years.”
Lily blinked. “Really?”
“I moved around a lot with the journalism gig right after college and hardly went home. A few years into the job, my mom called me from the hospital because she’d slipped at the nursing home where she worked and fractured her shoulder. She only needed money for the hospital bill, but I flew home to see her anyway. My dad was nowhere to be found and when he finally showed up, we got into an argument about him not being there for my mom when she needed him, and the fight upset her. That was the last thing I wanted, you know? She was already in a shitty situation and she really just wanted my dad. So I gave her what I could for the bill and left. My mom and I talk on the phone briefly every now and then, but her phone’s been disconnected for the past few months, so . . .” He trailed off and glanced away. “My family isn’t like yours.”
“Not wholesome, you mean?”
“Not good,” he said. “With the exception of my mom sometimes.”
She tilted her head, waiting for him to elaborate.
“I . . .” He leaned back against the wall, aware that she was watching him alertly. He didn’t want to tell her the horrible truths about his family. But he’d already started to, and as always whenever he talked to Lily, he felt things pouring out of him that he didn’t mean to say.
“Nobody knows where my grandfather—my biological grandfather, I mean—Maynard really came from,” he said. “He was a drifter who got drafted to the Vietnam War, and while he was there, he met a man named Cassius, and they became friends. Cassius told Maynard all about his life growing up in a small town in North Carolina called Warren, and Cassius showed Maynard pictures of his fiancée, Earnestine. He told Maynard about his life working at the steel mill and how he’d been planning to save up enough to buy himself and Earnestine a house before he’d been drafted. As soon as he left Vietnam, he and Earnestine were going to be married. Maynard didn’t have many stories of his own. As a kid, he’d moved around from relative to relative. He wasn’t stable in the way that Cassius was. But despite their differences, they became good friends and learned to depend on each other. Or at least that’s what people say.”