“Great. Great, great. Thanks so much, Brighton. We’ll see you in a few hours.”
I hang up and pace from the kitchen to the living room, through the dining room and one of those never-really-used rooms with new “antique” furniture and a grandfather clock that bongs about seven minutes early. It almost looks like every other house in Cross Pointe, but there’s a hint of not-quite-there-yet—it’s apparent in the price tag still dangling from a throw pillow, and the dining room chairs, which look like they’ve never been sat on. Everything is slightly too matchy-matchy and too new. But the Sheas are still new, still trying too hard.
Not that everyone else in Cross Pointe doesn’t try; we just don’t let our efforts show.
I circle back to the kitchen. They have one of those floor plans where the rooms all connect with multiple entrances; it all flows around the staircase to the second floor where Sophia sleeps in the only room with an open door. Behind one of the other seven is all the information I’d ever need to know about Jonah.
The Sheas said I don’t even need to go upstairs—as long as she’s quiet, I should just let her sleep. I click the video button on the monitor—not awake.
On my second lap of the first floor, I check for photos of Jonah. Picking up frame after frame and trying to replace them in the exact same positions. The house is a baby shrine. There are an absurd number of photos of Sophia in every state of dress and pose—I particularly enjoy the one of her half-buried in a basket of laundry hanging above the washing machine in the mud room—but the only photo I find of Jonah is in the back corner of a bookshelf. It’s of him in a middle-school baseball uniform.
I fail at my attempts to translate the tanned, dirty-blond boy with a wide, metallic grin to the taller, darker-haired ghost who sulks in Cross Pointe’s halls. I can’t stop the comparisons. What happened to make him stop smiling so wide his eyes wrinkle in the corners? How come his broad shoulders are always creeping up and forward instead of squared and confident like his thirteen-year-old self?
I carry the picture frame to the kitchen without even realizing it. I lean against the marble countertop and tilt the photo so it’s fully illuminated by the track lighting—he was thin, didn’t quite fill out his red-and-white uniform. But even then you could see hints of the muscles he would develop. I can’t stop studying his grin—it’s confident, carefree. So open and sincere that I’m jealous of the boy he’d been.
If Jonah had attended middle school with the rest of us, he would’ve been prime crush material. If he’d stop scowling long enough to acknowledge anyone at CP High, he’d still be.
I flip the frame facedown on the countertop and check the baby monitor again—sleeping. Though I’m still curious, I make myself walk away from the photo and into the living room.
It isn’t even curiosity, really, just restless energy. I thought tonight would be different. I thought it would be nightmarish, like the night before Dad’s funeral—tidal waves of Evy’s tears. Mom’s grief, which demands and judges and suffocates and needs an audience. And me—helpless and guilty because I couldn’t cry, couldn’t stop their tears, and couldn’t fix anything.
I spent today preparing for that, and in the end I wasn’t needed. I could be at Jeremy’s party with everyone, making Amelia ridiculously happy by giving him a chance. I could be catching up with Evy. I could be home right now, sleeping. Or watching mindless TV and eating popcorn. So how did I end up in some stranger’s house watching Sophia sleep on the video screen of her baby monitor?
I didn’t have to agree to babysit. Really, it’s just a plaque—Mr. Donnelly won’t be too disappointed if we wait until next year to order it. I don’t need it as filler for my college apps. Dad would hate that I’m stressing over this. I need to let it go.
And who cares why Jonah doesn’t want to volunteer?
Or why there’s no trace of him in this house besides a photo that’s four years old? Not even a hat or a sweatshirt or a backpack on the first floor. Nothing of his written between the playdates and Zumba classes on the calendar on the fridge. No magazines with his name in the rack by the couch.
I’ve scoured the whole first floor, and there’s nothing here to teach me anything more about him. But it’s not like I’m going to go snoop in his room. That would be ridiculous.