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Show house/ 376 "No, I d i d n ' t stay home. I don't l i k e i t at home. I spent l a s t summer in San Francisco, and I wouldn't have come back but I knew I had to f i n i s h school." "What's wrong at home?" Brian's teeth clenched and he didn't take his eyes off the road as he spoke. "You've got a right to know about me. My mother married when she was really young - younger even than we are - and she had my older brother and my three big sisters. Then her husband died of cancer. That's when she took up with my father - I was born about a year later. None of my borthers and sisters remember the wedding - or the divorce." "Your parents are divorced?" The word brought an image of light slipping down a black hole in the ground. "I don't believe in divorce. If people get married - especially if they have kids - they should stick by each other no matter what." I was thinking of Aunt Karen and my father, of the hole in his life. "They probably weren't married in the first place. If they weren't married, then there was no need for divorce." "They split up? Didn't they love each other?" Brian shrugged. "Apparently my father was a real ladies' man - unlike his son." He shot me a meaningful look that made me squirm inside. "I guess he was always involved with some woman or another. My mother threw him out when she found out he was sleeping with my sister's best friend's mother." "Oh no!" "Then my mother "got married again. He adopted me when I was six - probably so they could claim me for income-tax." His voice was bitter. |