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Winnie fawned all over the guy, which wasn’t surprising considering how mentally unstable she’d become, but Garrett was damned if he were going to stand by and let Marcus fuck his sister. He was the man of the house, now. He’d kill Marcus before allowing that to happen.
    Garrett walked through the house and out the front door to help his mother with the groceries. She looked different. She looked manic, overexcited; like a kid who’d eaten too much Halloween candy.
    “Thanks, sweetie. Thanks a million. You’ve been such a big help today. Really, I mean it. You’ve been an angel.”
    “Mom?”
    Beth sailed into the kitchen and flung open all of the cabinet doors. “I forget, every year, where we put things. I guess it doesn’t matter. We can make it up as we go along!”
    It occurred to Garrett that his mother had been drinking. Or maybe she’d popped the pills that Dr. Schau gave her (their mother was the only one to get pills). Garrett unloaded the bags and handed groceries to his mother. She was moving around the kitchen like she’d been shot out of a pinball machine. Bouncing around with all this extra energy.
    Garrett is very sensitive to other people’s moods,
Mrs. Marshall had written on his end-of-the-year student evaluation.
He is tuned in to their needs, desires, and intentions.
It was true, he thought. He could read other people in a matter of seconds. Some people might call it intuition, but that word sounded too feminine. Garrett preferred the word “perceptive.” Like a detective. Or a writer. Or like Dr. Schau, who could tell what you were thinking before you even opened your mouth. Right now, watching his mother, Garrett knew something had happened at the store. He pulled out the steaks.
    “Why so many steaks?” Garrett said.
    “Steaks?” his mother cried out. She knit her brow as though she didn’t know what he was referring to, as though it was easy to forget what must have been a hundred dollars worth of steaks in one of the bags. Just repeating that word, “steaks,” was as good as lying.
    “Why so many?” Garrett asked.
    “Well, because,” his mother said. “There are four of us and we’re having four dinner guests on Friday.”
    Garrett dropped his ass into a kitchen chair. It squealed, but thankfully did not break. “
Dinner
guests?”
    “Before you get all worked up, let me tell you who it is,” his mother said. “It’s my friend David from growing up, his wife, and their two
teenage daughters.
You know, girls, girls, girls. I thought you’d thank me. It seems like all your friends here are either at camp or their parents moved to the Hamptons.”
    Garrett closed his eyes. More teenagers he was supposed to connect with. He couldn’t believe his mother. She barely kept it together in front of her family; what made her think she might make it through an evening with other people? The topic of Garrett’s father would inevitably come up. His mother would drink too much wine and start to cry. Maybe Winnie, too. The guests would sit dumbfounded and uncomfortable, the
teenage daughters
wishing they were anywhere but trapped in this house.
    “No one’s moved to the Hamptons,” Garrett said irritably.
    “The Alishes,” Beth said. “Carson Alish’s parents moved to the Hamptons.”
    “That is so beside the point,” Garrett said.
    “What point?”
    “We’re supposed to be healing as a
family,
” Garrett said. “It’s bad enough you invited Marcus, and now we’re having some strange people over?”
    “Just for dinner,” she said. “Besides, they’re not strange. David and I have known each other since we were sixteen years old. For six or seven summers, he was the best friend I had.”
    The way his mother said the word “friend” tipped Garrett off immediately.
    “So this is an old boyfriend, then?”
    “He’s a friend. From a hundred years ago, Garrett. And he’s coming with his wife and kids.”
    “Dad’s only been dead for three months,” Garrett