I’d assumed there wasn’t much more to the story.
Then Reed turned slightly and looked toward the strangers again.
“Those people aren’t strangers to me.”
The woman in blue covered her mouth.
Reed looked back at me.
“I didn’t stay with relatives when I was nineteen, Mallory.”
He paused.
Then he said, quietly enough that I almost missed it:
“I was homeless.”
For several seconds, nobody said anything.
Not Paul.
Not my parents.
Not even Dana, which may have been the most surprising part because my sister can usually find something to say during an earthquake.
I looked at Reed.
I honestly didn’t know what I felt yet.
Angry was somewhere in there.
Confused too.
But mostly I was trying to understand how the man I had lived with for four years could casually remove an entire piece of his life and replace it with something else.
