Amber raked her with her eyes, and Lu had to wonder about all of this contempt that her mother seemed to harbor. “Why would you be contemplating a job? Don’t you have to support yourself and Nina?”
Patience, Lu thought. “Yes, I do. And I will.” She didn’t elaborate, because she knew that any mention of working with English soccer would send her mother into a fit of apoplexy. When she dared to look at her father, she could see the brackets of stress around his mouth. She didn’t know if this could be attributed to her or her mother.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense. What offer?”
This finally distracted Willa and Pete from their private conversation. Lu saw Willa’s head pop up. Meeting her sister’s inquiring look, Lu shrugged into a mute apology.
“English Premier League,” she said simply.
For a split second, Lu imagined her mother’s head spinning, which caused an inappropriate smile to leap to her lips. Looking helplessly at her father, she held his gaze, both of them hoping that the presence of the Pellitteris would help her mother hold her tongue.
With an ironic laugh, Amber shook her head. “A waste of talent,” she muttered under her breath, but loud enough for everyone, including Lex, who was returning from Nina’s room, to hear it.
Smiling widely, he leaped over the back of the couch, reclaiming his seat next to his mother, and commented. “Interesting,” he noted, as if he had heard the conversation in its entirety. “Working for the most well-known sports league in the world—hardly a waste of talent, Dr. A.”
“She always has been good at stroking your ego, Lex,” she retorted.
Lu, Chris, and Willa looked horrified, but Lex just smiled. “Yes, well as long as I continue to invite you along, I’m going to need it.” Then he flashed that smile with the raised eyebrow and dared her to continue.
Amber laughed like a schoolgirl. “Someone needs to keep you honest,” she said, still smiling.
Just like that, the tension eased. And in that moment Lu both loved and hated Lex. She wanted to stay away from him, wanted to maintain their current situation, in which they parented their child together. But she knew they couldn’t do a sequel. Sequels were never as good as the first story. Electric Boogaloo didn’t even compete with Breakin’. But when he did shit like this, when he pulled on his cape and rode to her rescue, she found it hard to hold fast to distance. As she looked to him gratefully, she took note of the tension in his body. Before she knew how to react, he turned to Jo.
“Jo, did you think that maybe you should have told us that Dad was dying?” he asked to a stunned room.
Lu’s intake of air was heard throughout the remaining silence.
Jo didn’t look at Lex or Pete. She merely twisted her cordial glass in her hand, biding her time. Lu looked around and knew that she was the only one in the room who didn’t know what was going on. So wrapped up in what had happened between herself and Lex the night before, she’d spent most of the day in an oblivion that seemed to accommodate her mood. She’d missed the tension in the boys at dinner; she’d missed the stress that Jo wore around her like a big, colorful scarf.
Lex didn’t repeat his question or even look mildly disturbed. He continued to lean back on the couch, close to Jo, with his arms thrown over the back. “Dad left letters with Caroline. She’d given it to me at the funeral, but I completely forgot about it.” He paused and looked over at Lu, their gazes locked. She knew she was the reason he forgot about the letter. She remembered seeing it in his hands in the Sunday-school room when she walked in—he’d stuffed it in his pocket, so his hands were free. “I found the letters today.” He broke eye contact with Lu and turned to his mother. “Why didn’t you guys tell us?”
Jo looked up. First at Pete, who had moved forward in his seat, but continued to hold on to Willa. Then at Lex, who still looked completely relaxed. There was no blame anywhere in his demeanor. Lu was hit with a wave of love for him that caught her completely off guard. Ten minutes earlier she’d wanted to hit him for his impromptu rescue.
“We found out two years ago, right before Christmas, as a matter of fact,” Jo began. “He’d been having headaches and had experienced some slower reflexes. It was inoperable.… We could have tried to finda cure … tried radiation. But he wanted quality of life. He wanted to live like he’d been living, watching the two of you”—she looked at both Pete and Lex—“and Nina and Lu and Willa.” She looked at the two of them. “He didn’t want to give that up. We argued about it—over and over. But I couldn’t change his mind.”