“It’s very strange. Bizarre. They all need to move on with their lives, already.”
He raises his eyebrows and looks at me, and I can tell that he is thinking about Will again. I can almost read the bubble over his head: Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?
“What?” I say, feeling defensive.
“Nothing,” he says with such purposeful wide-eyed innocence that I’m forced to take drastic measures. I pick up my phone and bang out an email, both my thumbs flying.
From: Josie Sent: August 18
To: Andrea Carlisle Subject: Re: Room Mom Dear Andrea,
Thank you so much for your kind note. Edie is a pleasure, and I can’t wait to get to know her better this year. I hope the Tooth Fairy is good to her tonight! Thank you for volunteering to be our room mother—I would love to accept your kind offer. Look forward to meeting you at Open House. And yes, it is a small world!
Best,
Josie
I scan it quickly for errors, then send it, listening to the sickening swooshing sound of an irreversible decision.
“There,” I say, showing him the sent message.
He quickly skims it, then hands me back my phone and smirks. “Whoa. Look at you, Little Miss Well Adjusted.”
“I am well adjusted,” I say, and for one second, I actually believe it.
—
THAT NIGHT, I wake up around two and can’t fall back asleep. I tell myself that it’s just first-week-of-school jitters, or adjusting to an earlier bedtime, but as morning approaches, I know it runs deeper than that. I know it has something to do with Daniel and Sophie, Mom and Meredith, Will and Andrea. And maybe, most of all, it has something to do with Edie, fast asleep at this very moment. I imagine her blond curls spilling over her pillow, the shiny coin underneath it, as she dreams her magical dreams. I think of my conversation with Gabe, the person who knows me best and the only one who knows my secret. My heart aches with regret over so many things, big and small, including mistakes that have relegated me to manufacturing boyfriends on faraway continents who are as imaginary as the Tooth Fairy herself.
chapter four
MEREDITH
On Friday night, forty-five minutes before Nolan and I are leaving for dinner with friends, our babysitter cancels via text. So sorry I’m sick and can’t watch Harper tonight. I have food poisoning.
“Liar,” I say before slamming my phone onto the bathroom counter, hard enough so that I check to make sure I haven’t cracked the screen. Even if I believed she were sick, which I do not, her flippant “so sorry” along with those three emojis would still have pushed me over the edge.
“Who’re you calling a liar?” Nolan calls out from our closet, where he is getting dressed.
“The sitter,” I answer. “She just canceled.”
“Who is she?” Nolan asks, emerging in boxers, socks, and a new light blue linen shirt. One of the many luxuries of being the husband, at least in our household, is that Nolan does not concern himself with domestic logistics like hiring sitters. All he has to do is pick out his own shirt.
“The middle Tropper girl,” I say. “I bet she’s canceling because of a boy.”
“She could have food poisoning,” Nolan says. “People do get food poisoning, ya know.”
“No way. Who gets food poisoning at six-forty-five on a Friday night? And by the way—if you truly do have food poisoning, then lie and say it’s anything other than food poisoning. Because food poisoning always sounds like a lie when you’re canceling.”
“It really does,” Nolan says with a laugh. “Why is that, anyway?”
“Because it usually is….I should call her out on it. Tell her to go ahead and come anyway, since it’s not contagious.”
“You can’t babysit with food poisoning,” Nolan says, missing the point. I watch him unbutton his shirt, then put it back on one of the padded hangers from my end of the closet.
“What are you doing? Put that back on,” I say. “I’ll see if my mother or Josie can come watch Harper.”
“Really?” he says, looking disappointed.
“Don’t you want to go out?” I say, thinking that I’ve been looking forward to our plans with the Grahams all week.
“I guess,” he says. “But I’m just as happy to stay in. We could order Chinese and watch Homeland. We have three episodes left.”
I cross my arms and glare at him. “We hardly ever go out,” I say.
“That’s not true,” he says. “We just went out to dinner last Saturday.”