“Is that why he walked out on us?”
Instead of answering, her mom glanced up into the rearview mirror.
“You’ve been looking forward to this, haven’t you, Jonah?”
“Are you kidding? This is going to be great!”
“I’m glad you have a good attitude. Maybe you could teach your sister.”
He snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“I just don’t see why I can’t spend the summer with my friends,” Ronnie whined, cutting back in. She wasn’t done yet. Though she knew the odds were slim to none, she still harbored the fantasy that she could convince her mom to turn the car around.
“Don’t you mean you’d rather spend all night at the clubs? I’m not naive, Ronnie. I know what goes on in those kinds of places.”
“I don’t do anything wrong, Mom.”
“What about your grades? And your curfew? And-”
“Can we talk about something else?” Ronnie cut in. “Like why it’s so imperative that I spend time with my dad?”
Her mother ignored her. Then again, Ronnie knew she had every reason to. She’d already answered the question a million times, even if Ronnie didn’t want to accept it.
Traffic eventually started to move again, and the car moved forward for half a block before coming to another halt. Her mother rolled down the window and tried to peer around the cars in front of her.
“I wonder what’s going on,” she muttered. “It’s really packed down here.”
“It’s the beach,” Jonah volunteered. “It’s always crowded at the beach.”
“It’s three o’clock on a Sunday. It shouldn’t be this crowded.”
Ronnie tucked her legs up, hating her life. Hating everything about this.
“Hey, Mom?” Jonah asked. “Does Dad know Ronnie was arrested?”
“Yeah. He knows,” she answered.
“What’s he going to do?”
This time, Ronnie answered. “He won’t do anything. All he ever cared about was the piano.”
Ronnie hated the piano and swore she’d never play again, a decision even some of her oldest friends thought was strange, since it had been a major part of her life for as long as she’d known them. Her dad, once a teacher at Juilliard, had been her teacher as well, and for a long time, she’d been consumed by the desire not only to play, but to compose original music with her father.