How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"After a while I'm writing him, and he's not answering. So as soon as I get stateside, I look him up. He dodged my calls. He didn't have the cash to give me. And then he takes off for Florida…" (20.49)
For a wartime buddy, Joe really screwed over Peter—instead of giving him his share of the money, Joe decides to run off with it all like a bandit in the night. He puts it into his appliance stores and squirrels the extra cash away for a dream house instead of staying true to his word.
Quote #5
"He wasn't what you thought," Mom whispered to me that night. We lay together in one of the double beds. Joe snored in the other one. "He wasn't what I thought, either. Joe set me straight. I should have known what he was, the way he went after you that way." (26.20)
Bev feels utterly betrayed by Peter and the fact that he was pursuing them because he was after Joe, but in the end, she's the one who betrays him the most. Instead of protecting him from her husband, she's complicit in his eventual death.
Quote #6
Peter wasn't who I thought he was. Could it be that Mom wasn't, either?
If everyone was wondering what had gone on between Peter and my mother, wouldn't I be crazy not to wonder, too? (28.16-17)
Now that the truth is hazy, Evie doesn't know whom to trust. Their whole situation is so muddled up that she can no longer continue to simply see the best in her parents; for all she knows, Joe could be a murderer and her mother could be a cheating harlot. Ugh.