The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

“Doesn’t the car look great?” I hinted.  “My friend’s dad did such a good job, I think it’s even better than when you bought it home for the first time!  Remember how we tried to polish it up, Anthony?  I helped you with that.”

“We’re talking about your brother’s career, Gabriella!” my mom scolded.  “Don’t interrupt.”

“I purchased that vehicle after ascertaining its value as an automotive classic, Gaby,” Anthony told me.  What?  He’d purchased it because it was what he could afford at the time with his job as a line cook.  I shook my head and he said sternly, “I’ve always enjoyed a growth mindset.  Looks weren’t the imperative.”

“Not with cars, anyway,” Kristi countered, and laughed.  Then she frowned at the half-grapefruit that made up her dinner.  “I’m full,” she announced.

I wasn’t full; I was starving.  I’d had practice and attended a jazz dance class today, but since my scale showed that I had gone up half a pound, I had skipped lunch.  The grapefruit wasn’t enough to do anything but make my stomach feel sour, but it was going to have to be sufficient.

My brother ignored his wife.  “Actually, I’ll need that to be reinstated in my driveway,” he said to me.

“What?  What do you need, sweetheart?” my mom asked him, and he sighed and gestured impatiently, because none of us could ever keep up with him.

“The car, of course.  I need it returned.  You can do that tomorrow, Gaby,” he informed me.

“What?  But—you have a car!  Lots of cars!”

“Leave the keys on the tire when you come,” he suggested.  “I’ll be busy.”

“Anthony, why do you need it back right now?” I asked, feeling desperation rise up in me.  I was getting my credit card paid off from my redecorating splurges of last fall, but there was no room for a car payment in my budget.

“If he needs it, he needs it,” my mom said sharply.

I looked at my brother.  “I thought you were giving it to me for a while.”

“That ‘while’ is up.  You really can’t expect everything in life to be handed to you,” Kristi started to explain, but this time, I couldn’t hold myself back and the rude answer burst out.

“I don’t expect that, Kristi!  I worked to pay for college and I got a partial scholarship, and I pay my own mortgage, too!”

I shouldn’t have said it.  That was a big, big sore spot, and Anthony immediately sat up straight from the relaxed pose he used to lecture from and scowled at me.  My mom had paid for his schooling and she’d borrowed to give him and Kristi the down payment for their house.  She’d probably given him more in secret, too, but that wasn’t something he liked to discuss.

“Never mind.  Sorry,” I said quickly, but that wasn’t enough to head off a fight.  I hadn’t wanted to argue in front of Case, but Anthony didn’t feel that constraint.

“That was all a strategic trade-off,” he told me, his voice high, but then he was so mad that he just spat the rest right out without any fanciness.  “At least I didn’t have to sleep with my boss for a bonus so I could buy a love-nest condo.”

There was silence around the table, except for a funny buzzing that I thought might have been only in my own ears.   “What?  No, I didn’t get…a bonus?  Is that what you think?  That I was with him for…”  I couldn’t seem to think straight.  “You know?” I asked my brother, but he didn’t answer, so I turned to my mom, who was looking at her grapefruit.  “You told him?” I asked.  “You told Anthony about me and Shep?”

Kristi reached across the table to hold my mom’s hand.  “Gaby, I don’t think you should have expected your behavior to stay a secret!  It’s just what my guru says: bad choices will surface, ripples in the calm water of your life.  Like how I had signed up to teach a beginner flow class and then I realized that it was at the same time as Case’s Introduction to Mandarin seminar and I couldn’t be in both places at once.  Luckily, Mom helped me with that.”  She smiled at my mother.  “My guru wasn’t at all surprised by what you did with your boss, knowing the rest of your history,” she mentioned to me.  “Like how you were failing calculus until your professor ‘helped’ you.”  She shook her head, disappointed.

“I…”  The buzzing got louder.  “You told your guru?”

“I tell my guru everything!”  Kristi stared at me, shocked.  “Gaby, he’s my spirit guide!  My closest confidant!  The other half of my being!”

I looked again at my mom.  I remembered sitting with her at this very table, crying, with her demanding to know what was wrong with me, why I’d gotten fired, until I finally told her that I’d been having an affair with Shephard.  I’d spilled out the whole dirty, ugly story of how much I loved him and how I’d thought he loved me, how I’d believed that he and his wife didn’t have a real marriage.  I told her how quick he’d been to drop me and how I hadn’t realized how disposable and useless I was, both in his business and in his life.  I’d sobbed that I didn’t know if I could ever hold up my head again and how I couldn’t even manage to get out of bed some mornings.  Most mornings, back then.

“Mom?”  She didn’t look at me now.  “I can’t believe,” I said, but my voice choked.  “I needed your help, but I didn’t think you’d…how could you have told…”

She finally raised her eyes from her dinner plate.  “Kristi noticed that I was upset about something, and I don’t keep secrets from my family, Gabriella.  If you’re ashamed of what you did, then you shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

I nodded, because that was true.  She had told me that before, too, back in December after she learned