Chapter 46: A Legendary Night
The Duncan House
"Oh, look at you!"
Amy appeared at the bottom of the stairs as Adam came down in his suit, her hands going to her face with genuine delight. "Bob, come look at your son."
"He gets it from me," Bob said immediately, appearing from the kitchen. He looked at Adam with the proud, slightly self-congratulatory expression of a father who believed this was a reasonable claim despite all available evidence.
Adam looked at his father — the bald head, the comfortable mid-section — and made a private note to stay active in his thirties.
"Dad, can I ask you something?"
"Anything." Bob pulled him aside and leaned in with an expression that was more conspiratorial than parental. "Is it about tonight? Because your old man has thought ahead." He produced, from somewhere, a quantity of what Adam could only describe as excessive preparation. "Prom night, curfew doesn't apply, you're eighteen—"
"Bob!"
Amy's voice cut across the room.
"I'm being responsible," Bob said, without embarrassment.
"He doesn't need that," Amy said, pulling Adam firmly to her side. She looked at him with the specific intensity of a mother who had Things To Say. "Adam. Tonight — be careful. I was talented, I had options, I almost had a real career, but your father was very charming and then suddenly I was pregnant and living in a small town and—"
"Mom."
"Yes?"
"The baby you're describing is me."
Amy stopped. Looked at him. Laughed despite herself. "You know what I mean. I don't regret anything. You are the best thing in my life. But — you have Columbia. You have a future. Don't let one night change the whole picture."
"I hear you," Adam said.
"Good." She straightened his tie with the focused attention of someone who needed something to do with her hands. "You're going to have a wonderful night."
Bob handed over the truck keys with a look that communicated about fourteen things simultaneously, most of which Adam chose not to engage with.
He drove out into the evening.
Passing the Cooper house, he spotted George Jr. standing by the family car in a suit, arms crossed, staring at nothing with a particular quality of irritation.
Adam pulled over.
"Hey, George."
George Jr. looked at him, made a sound that was not a greeting, and looked away.
Missy was standing a few feet away in a dress, watching the whole thing with visible amusement.
"What's going on?" Adam asked her.
"He's mad at you," Missy said helpfully.
"I can see that. Any particular reason?"
"Veronica," Missy said, with the tone of someone who had been waiting to explain this.
George Jr. contributed a gesture that required no translation.
Adam thought back. Veronica May — bright smile, two dimples, a history he was being credited with more of than he'd actually participated in.
"George, for what it's worth," Adam said carefully, "I heard she's been doing really well lately. Genuinely. You two make sense." He paused. "Congratulations."
He pulled back onto the road before George could formulate a response.
The story of George Jr. and Veronica was its own thing — complicated, slow-moving, involving a church Halloween event that Mary had organized two years ago that had apparently transformed Veronica's entire personality and temporarily derailed George's romantic prospects.
The event had been Mary's idea — a dramatic presentation of consequences, designed to inspire reflection. It had worked on Veronica with unusual thoroughness. She'd emerged from it a different person in ways that George had found simultaneously attractive and frustrating, and the two of them had been navigating the gap between those feelings ever since.
They'd apparently arrived at something real not long ago, which was good. George Jr. deserved something real.
The Veronica-and-Adam history was largely a matter of rumor and George Jr.'s imagination, but Adam had learned that correcting rumor was usually less effective than just letting time handle it.
The Smith House
Adam parked, straightened his jacket, walked to the front door, and rang the bell.
He heard footsteps on the stairs inside.
For reasons he didn't examine too closely, he felt a small, unexpected flutter of something that wasn't quite nervousness.
He waited.
End of Chapter 46
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