If Teddy weren’t out of reach again, Nora might call to ask, “Do you think I’m going crazy? Or, in this city with nine million people, could I possibly have seen someone I used to know?”
And not just anyone . . .
Teddy would want to know who she’d seen, opening the door to other questions with answers Nora isn’t willing to give.
A text alert pops up on her laptop.
She opens it. Heather.
Happy Saturday. Jules said we’re having dinner with you guys!
That’s news to Nora.
Uncertain how to respond, she sees three quivering dots as Heather types something else, probably that she meant to send the text to someone else.
But the next message is I’ll grab a reservation. Is 8 p.m. good?
Is she being manipulated?
Or could she have made plans and forgotten? There are so many blank, fuzzy spots in her days lately. But she doubts this is one of them, and she’s hardly in the mood to socialize.
Then again, she and Keith are already planning to go out. Does she really want to be alone with him after that conflict in the kitchen?
She types, Sure! Sounds fun!
Even as she hits Send, she knows she should have at least asked Keith about it. She’d better tell Heather she just has to double-check with him.
Too late. Before she can backpedal on her acceptance, a new text pops up. This one is from a restaurant app, informing her that Heather Tamura has made a reservation for four people at eight o’clock at an Italian restaurant on Mulberry Street.
Jules had mentioned something about it the other day, when she came over for lunch with the fennel salad. Nora had forgotten all about it, but clearly Jules, with her self-proclaimed lousy memory, had not.
All around the mulberry bush . . .
Nora’s memory, too, is lacking. The tune spins an intangible recollection of something sweet and delicate as cotton candy, and—
“Mom?”
The past dissolves as she whirls to see Stacey.
Her daughter is holding a steaming latte and a plastic shopping bag from the drugstore. Nora looks around for Lennon, remembering what Jules had said about the two of them, and how Stacey had styled her hair and makeup before leaving the house. Now she looks windblown, and her makeup is smudged. Her contacts were probably bothering her and she’d rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t have been crying . . . could she?
“What are you doing here, Mom?”
“I’m . . . drinking coffee.” Realizing her cup is empty, Nora adds, “Well, I was. I mean, why else do you come to a coffee shop?”
Her tone is too bright. Defensive.
“You told Dad you had a ton of stuff to do.”
She’s not accusatory, exactly, but Nora bristles.
“I did. And this is my reward for getting it all done. How was your walk?”
“It was . . . you know. Fine.”
“Did you go shopping?” She gestures at the bag.
“What? Oh . . . yeah. I needed some stuff for school.”
“Do you want to sit down?”
It’s clear that she doesn’t, and Nora doesn’t want her to. But here they are, and Stacey sits.
“Just for a few minutes. I really need to get home to . . . study.”
“It’s Saturday. You’re a senior.”
“It’s a new school. I have . . .”
“A ton of stuff to do?”
“Exactly.” Her smile is faint.
Nora closes her laptop, reminding herself to erase her internet history later. When she first got here, she’d entered the name Jacob Grant into the search engine, something she hadn’t wanted to do on the home Wi-Fi in case Keith would somehow be able to see it.
She hadn’t gotten a single hit. Not even when she added the few details she’d known about him back in the ’90s. But then, would he have given her his real name?
“Stacey, have you been crying?” Nora asks, getting a better look at her eyes.
“No!”
“Yes, you have. What happened? Did Lennon do something that upset you?”
Stacey hesitates. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t have to— Look, I know you guys have been . . . I’m not sure what you’re calling it, but Jules said you’re . . .”
“His girlfriend?”
The word is bigger and far more specific than whatever Nora had been reaching for, but her daughter gives a decisive nod. “Yeah. I mean, that’s what he says.”
“Wow. That happened pretty quickly. You haven’t even known him a week.”
“So? Dad always says you guys fell in love at first sight. You eloped right after you met.”
“Not right after. And we were much older.”
And I never would have done that if my father were still alive. I was so alone, and then Keith came along . . .
“You weren’t ‘much older,’” Stacey says.
“Well, there’s a huge difference between seventeen and twenty-five, Stacey, in case you’re thinking of—”
“I’m not! God, Mom. I’m not getting married. Don’t worry.”
She sips her latte. Nora lifts her own cup, remembers that it’s empty, and sets it down again. She can’t tell Stacey that she’s not worried she might elope with someone like Keith, but because Lennon reminds her of someone else. Someone dangerous, who preyed on a lonely misfit.
But Lennon isn’t Jacob.
Stacey glances at her phone, lit with a text.
“Is that from him?”
“No.”
Nora knows it’s a lie. She can tell by the way Stacey quickly closes the screen; by the flash of guilt on her face; by the way she refuses to make eye contact.
I was once your age, Nora should say. I get it. I understand more than you think.
She can be that mother, right? She can offer empathy and comfort, words of maternal wisdom, anecdotes from her own past.
Made-up anecdotes. But close enough to the truth.
I understand. I know what it’s like to fall for a guy like that.
“I should go,” Stacey says.
“Wait—why were you crying?”
“We had a fight.”
“About what? You don’t have to tell me,” she adds because she’s not that mother. Not to Stacey. And Stacey’s not Piper. She doesn’t share confidences.
She takes a deep breath. “He said I was adopted.”
Nora’s heart jumps. “What? Why would he say that?”
“Genetics. You and Dad and Piper all have blue eyes, and mine are brown, so he said that either one or both of you can’t be my birth parent. So I told him that you wear colored contact lenses, and then he said . . . you know what? It doesn’t matter.”
“Stacey? What did he say?”
She sighs. “That he wasn’t surprised to hear that, because you strike him as someone who’s fake.”
Nora clenches her fists on her lap beneath the table. That little . . .
How dare he? How dare he say that about her? To her daughter? To anyone?
“But not just you, Mom. He said our whole family seems superficial and plastic, except for me.”
What is there to say to that? Any of it? That it isn’t true? That he has no business making assumptions about their family, and based on what?
“So . . . is it because of how we look? Is that what he means?”
“What else would he mean? It’s not like he knows any of you. Except . . .” She toys with her cup, rolling it back and forth between her palms.
“Except what?”
“Nothing. Forget it. It’s over.”
“You broke up? Good. I’m glad. You don’t need—”