Wild Roses by Deb Caletti

what're you doing?"
    "Work."
    "One, you look too guilty for work. Two,
there's one of
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    Dino's books open in front of you. Unless you
got a new job I don't know about, that's not work. What's going on?"
    My father sighed. He looked out the window, as
if hoping the answer to my question would form in the clouds. I see a giraffe! I
see a pirate ship! I see that I'm nosing around on my ex-wife's new husband to
try to catch him doing something horrible!
    1 moved closer to the bed to see.
    "No!" he said. He actually put one arm over his
notes, same as those kids who make sure you don't cheat off them.
    "Dad, God."
    "All right," he said. "Okay! I just had a
little feeling about something and I wanted to check it out." "What kind of
little feeling?" "About Dino Cavalli." "No shit," I said.
    "Cassie, watch your mouth. Is that necessary? I
was just thumbing through this book recently and something caught my eye that
didn't add up."
    "You mean you were hunting through it line by
line for something that didn't add up," I said.
    He ignored me, which meant I was right. "I
found something. I mean, I think I found something, and I was just checking it
out."
    "What did you find?"
    "I don't know if I want to say."
    "What? He's actually a woman," I guessed. "A
killer. A killer woman."
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    "A liar," my father said.
    I sighed. "You should get a girlfriend, Dad. I
mean it. It's been three years, and you haven't had a date."
    "I've had dates. This isn't about dates. This
is important. Your mother's life. Your life. If he's lied about one thing, he's
lied about others, mark my words."
    "Marissa what's her name. She seemed nice. A
little Career Barbie but ..."
    "All right, listen to this," Dad said. He
adjusted his glasses and began to read. "'My mother would make a simple lunch,
gougere, some bread, and then I would practice.'"7
    "Goo-zhair. Is that edible? I think our
neighbor's cat had one of those caught in his throat once," I said. "It's a
lie."
    "There's no such food?"
    "No, it's a real food, but it's a recipe from
1969. He's claiming he ate it when he was eight or nine, and the man is older
than I am. The recipe first appeared in a Moldavi wine recipe book, and the wine
itself used in the recipe wasn't even made until 1968."
    "God, Dad."
    "I know," he said.
    "No! I'm talking about you! What are you doing?
So maybe the food wasn't around. Maybe he made a mistake. Maybe they got his age
wrong. Maybe a thousand things. What does this prove? You've already got plenty
of reason
    7 Dino Cavalli--The Early Years: An Oral
History. From Edward Reynolds, New York, N.Y. Aldine Press, 1999.
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    not to like him. Shit, in my opinion, Mom has
plenty of reasons not to like him, and she still does."
    Dad got up, gathered his papers. He looked
pissed at me. "It just may prove what I've always known. He's a fraud. You just
wait."
    It's tough to lip-synch violin playing, but I
didn't say this. I turned and left the room, as I didn't want to fight with Dad.
Anything I said would sound like a defense of Dino, and the Civil War began on
less.
    "That snake was fucking strong, man," Zach
Rogers said. "A reptile's muscles you can't exactly see, you know, through that
skin and everything, but I had two encyclopedias on the lid. Two, and he still
pushed open the lid and got out. Here's the psychic-phenomenon-ESPN-shit part.
One encyclopedia? It fell open to a page on dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus rex.
Biggest badass dude of reptiles in history Now, that's almost creepy. What are
the odds?"
    I was walking home from school with Courtney
Powelson, my neighbor, and Zach, though I don't even think he lived near us. He
was just sort of migrating along with us, and I had the feeling he was soon
going to look up and wonder where the hell he was. He either had a thing for
Courtney or he was so used to seeing me that he forgot we were separate
individuals. I had every class period with him, even lunch. It was one of those
annoying