The Fable of Us by Nicole Williams Page A

hadn’t known anything about Boone owning his own business or what that business might have been. I hadn’t known that had been on his radar even. The fact that it had gone under so recently gave me fresh insight into why he’d so quickly taken the deal I offered him.
    Desperation: what makes the world go round.
    “What kind of business was that?” The forkful of ham stayed frozen in the air as my dad continued his interrogation.
    When Frieda came up behind Boone after giving me a side of ham and poached eggs, she waited. Boone glanced back when he noticed her, his forehead lining.
    “Your napkin, Cavanaugh,” Ford piped up. “It goes in your lap. It’s not used for wiping your ass like I know you were thinking.”
    Beside him, Charlotte snickered, and across the table, Mr. McBride, who looked to have packed on fifty pounds in seven years and run his liver into the ground judging from the pale brown spots dotting his arms and face, popped off a single-noted laugh.
    “Please, everyone. We’re at the breakfast table, and we’ve got a whole tableful of guests.” Mom patted the air with her hands, addressing the room like the debutante she’d been. “Now, Boone, you were telling us about the little business you started up . . .” Her hand flicked in his direction, giving him the floor.
    I fought the urge to correct her for applying the word “little” to both Boone’s and my business ventures. In Freudian terms, that pretty much meant my mom thought we were a couple of fools to think we could or should think big enough to venture into the business world. She’d never understand, because to understand, a person needed to be wired with the understanding code.
    She wasn’t.
    Pinching his napkin, Boone simply moved it from his plate to the side of it. He didn’t put it in his lap, where it so-called belonged. In his own way, a way that wouldn’t earn him a reprimand from my mom, Boone was giving the finger to Ford. “ I started a non-profit kids’ rec center.”
    Guests in the process of eating their breakfasts stopped chewing. I’d been about to dive into my thick slice of buttered toast when I turned my attention elsewhere. A kids’ center? A non-profit? Come again?
    “What’s that?” Dad pressed, his mustache curling higher from his half-smile. “Like a daycare?”
    Again, Ford choked on a laugh, though this time he didn’t seem to care about trying to hide it.
    Boone grabbed his fork and cut into one of his eggs. My dad wasn’t the only one venting his emotions on the breakfast food.
    “No, kids could come and go as they wanted,” Boone explained around a mouthful of egg, “but it gave the growing number of kids in our community who are being raised in unstable-to-volatile homes a soft spot to land for a few hours. A place where they could just be kids and get warm meals.” He finished with a shrug and stuffed the other half of his egg into his mouth.
    No one had anything to say, not even my dad or the laughing hyena Ford. I didn’t even know what to say, because I couldn’t figure out how to think about what Boone had just said. He’d owned and run a charitable program for the underprivileged kids in the community? He gave them a safe place to play and a reliable place to eat a hot meal? He had the vision to start something like that, the knowledge to see it through to completion, and the composure to explain it to a roomful of judgmental strangers, even after that business had crumbled?
    Who was the person sitting beside me? What had happened to the one who had turned his back and left me when I’d needed him most? How did that kind of a person go on to build a business that revolved around supporting others and being there when others weren’t?
    It seemed Boone and I had more to get straight than just our fake story of how we’d reunited after all of these years.
    “I take it this non-profit paid you a salary.’” Ford leaned forward in his seat, innocence pasted onto his face. Ford