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Dolly

“I don’t really know anything about it.”

“Then tell me what you know about your brother.”

“I know that he’s been through a lot,” I say.

“Explain.”

I stare at Oscar.

“Why are you like this?”

“Like what?” Oscar asks.

“So cold. So calculating.”

“I’m not being either of those things,” he says, but he is.

“Is it because you’re wealthy?”

Oscar stares at me for a moment. His food is waiting on the coffee table, but he’s sitting next to me. I could reach out and place my hand on his knee, but I don’t.

“When my parents got divorced, my dad got custody of me and my brothers,” he says.

“Oh.”

“It was very, very hard to be the child of such a pompous asshole.”

“I believe it,” I whisper. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”

“Harder than it should have been,” he says.

Because he had an evil stepmother who hated him. I’ve heard stories. As far as I know, Oscar’s dad went through a couple of wives and many, many girlfriends.

“Being a teenager in that position must have been hard.”

“It was,” he says. “I just wanted my parents to be together.”

“I’m sorry you went through that.”

He holds a hand up.

“You don’t have to be,” he says.

“I still am.”

“You don’t have to say you’re sorry. It’s not your fault.”

I stare at him.

“Oscar, have you ever had a friend?”

“What?”

“Have you ever had a friend?” I repeat my question.

“I’ve had a friend.”

“You’re acting like you haven’t. Friends try to comfort each other when they go through something hard. I’m not saying ‘sorry’ to be annoying or callous or fake. I’m saying it because I actually feel sorry for you.”

“Oh,” he says.

“My family broke up, too,” I say.

He’s quiet, and then Oscar speaks, too.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“So you know what it’s like.”

“To be alone? Yeah. To have a stepparent that hates me? Also yes.”

“My stepmom sent us to boarding school.”

“You and Ryan, right?”

“Phoenix was too old,” he says.

“Phoenix got lucky.”

“He didn’t. There were no winners,” he says. “We all lost.”

“And now you had to go and find out about your dad’s indiscretions.”

“That’s such a nice way to describe it.”

“Oscar, your dad was a rich guy.”

“What?”

“He was a rich boy.”

He stares at me, blinking.

“Your dad was so fucking rich that it’s amazing he didn’t have more scandals.”

“I don’t think that’s much of a comfort.”

“Maybe not,” I say. “Still, he took kids, and he gave them homes. There are worse things.”

“We don’t know what happened to all of the kids,” Oscar says.

“Then you need to find out,” I say. “You need to track them down, and you need to make sure they’re okay. Then maybe you’ll find out what my brother was really after.”

And maybe we’ll find out why my brother was so quick to be willing to throw me under the bus.