Read Online Family and Other Accidents by Shari Goldhagen - Free Book Online

time they laughed at the simplicity of it—no qualifiers, ifs, ands, or buts—happy or sad. Now they use it as a way out of arguments not worth fighting over.
    â€œSad not to be dancing,” Mona says to her smushed cake.
    â€œConn will dance with you.” Jack lets go of Mona’s hand, nods toward his brother. “And he’s actually good at it.”
    â€œYeah, I’ve been taking swing lessons.” Connor swallows his wine. Standing, he takes Mona’s fingers and bends into a strangely formal bow. “Ms. Lockridge, may I have this dance?”
    At that very moment, AnnaFram appears and floats into Connor’s chair, even though she’s assigned to the head table with her sister.
    â€œYou’re doing better than I ever did.” Anna winks at Mona in a way that is annoying because it seems sincere. “Jack and I spent senior prom by the punch bowl.”
    Feeling blood rush to her cheeks, Mona can’t think of a way to get out of it, so she allows Connor to lead her out to the raised center of the ballroom.
    Dancing with Jack’s brother is embarrassing. Not because Connor is that much younger, only five years, no younger than she is younger than Jack. What’s humiliating is that Jack saw her, and probably Connor, as a problem easily fixed—send the kids off to go play, let the grown-ups talk. Still, after the first song, she relaxes against Connor’s chest, feels the bones of his torso through his jacket. Drakkar Noir haunts his collar, and she remembers giving him a bottle as a Christmas present last year, wonders if he wore it tonight specifically because he knew he would see her or if he liked it so much that he wears it every day.
    â€œSo you guys and the Frams grew up together?” Mona asks. Until the fine-grained linen invitation arrived, she’d heard virtually nothing about these Frams, was aghast and unsettled to find out they had been a huge part of Jack’s youth.
    â€œYeah, they lived next door,” Connor says. “Mrs. Fram spent all this money redecorating, and she wouldn’t even let you go into certain rooms. AnnaFram and Carrie practically lived with us.”
    In the years Mona has lived in Jack’s house, she’s seen no signs of any of it, and she wonders about the artifacts. Where are the pictures of Jack and Anna at high school dances? Shots of the girls dressing Connor up like a cowboy? Where are the stuffed animals won at Cedar Point? Love letters Anna wrote Jack during college?
    â€œDid Anna and Jack break up when she met her husband?” Mona asks, and Connor’s shoulders tighten under her arms.
    â€œI guess they just wanted different things,” he says, hesitantly. “I mean she’s already working on her second kid, and Jack, well, you know.”
    â€œSure,” Mona says, and Connor loosens, drums along with the song, tapping the rhythm where he holds her at the waist. But she wonders if she does know.
    â€œAnd then she asks me,”
Connor sings the words in her ear in a way that’s both spooky and oddly endearing—something Jack would never do.
“Do I look all right? And I say yes, you look wonderful tonight.”
    â€œYou’re drunk, aren’t you?” she asks.
    â€œI think I am, milady.”
    â€œGood,” she says, because it seems like something Jack wouldn’t say.
    She thinks about this thing Connor assumes she knows. In theory Jack
should
be good with children. When Mona started dating Jack, she’d been vision-blurring jealous of the time and effort Jack put into his orphaned brother—chauffeuring Connor all around Cleveland’s suburbs, sitting through swim meets and parent-teacher conferences. Secretly, Mona had been thrilled when Connor packed his Nissan Sentra and headed off to school in Boulder instead of Case Western where Jack had wanted him to go.
    Now she feels guilty and embarrassed for having felt that way. Now