Aria’s cell phone rang, and Emily broke away, saying she had to get to class. As she drifted down the hall, Aria looked at the screen and frowned. Call from Meredith. It was unusual for her father’s fiancée to be calling her.
“Aria?” Meredith said when Aria answered. “Oh my God, I’m so glad I caught you.” In the background, Meredith and Byron’s toddler, Lola, was wailing. There were also sounds of banging pots and shattering dishes. “I really need your help,” she went on. “I want to re-create this amazing pasta dish we had at an Italian restaurant in Philly for your dad tonight, but I just went to Fresh Fields, and they’re out of tatsoi. The Fresh Fields in Bryn Mawr has it, but I can’t go right now—Lola’s super-fussy and I don’t want to make it worse by lugging her out in public. Can you go for me after school?”
Aria slumped against the wall and stared absently at a poster reminding seniors to sign up for shore excursions on the upcoming Eco Cruise. “Can’t you make it tomorrow?” Bryn Mawr wasn’t exactly close.
“I really need it tonight.”
“Why?” Aria asked. “Does Byron have visiting professors in town or something?”
Meredith made an uncomfortable noise at the back of her throat. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
Now Aria was curious. “Seriously. What’s the occasion?”
Another long pause. Meredith sighed. “Okay, it’s the anniversary of our first kiss.”
Nausea rippled through Aria’s gut. “Oh,” she said nastily. Her parents had still been married when Byron and Meredith had their first kiss.
“You asked!” Meredith protested. “I didn’t want to tell you!”
Aria shoved her free hand into her blazer pocket. If Meredith really wanted to keep it from her, then why had she called up Aria in the first place?
“Aria?” Meredith’s voice rang through the phone. “Are you there? Look, I’m sorry I told you. But I really do need your help. Can you do this for me just this once?”
Lola started to wail even louder in the background, and Aria shut her eyes. Even though she didn’t support this anniversary, the more stressed out Meredith was, the more Lola would suffer. Saying no would probably get back to Byron, too, and she’d never hear the end of it.
“Fine,” she said as the second bell rang. “Except you have to tell me what tatsoi is.”
A few hours later, Aria pulled into Fresh Fields in Bryn Mawr. The town was about ten miles away, had a small liberal-arts college, an art house theater that produced avant-garde plays, and an old inn that with a sign that said GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE. The cars in the grocery store’s parking lot were covered with bumper stickers beseeching people to SAVE THE WHALES, GO GREEN, LIVE IN PEACE, and KILL YOUR TELEVISION.
After passing through the grocery store’s automatic doors and between at least thirty barrels of olives, she headed to the greens section of the produce department. Apparently, tatsoi was like spinach. Why Meredith couldn’t have just used spinach for the stupid let’s-celebrate-our-affair dinner was beyond her.
The whole thing still made Aria squeamish. She’d been the one who caught Byron and Meredith kissing in a back alley in seventh grade. Byron had begged her not to say anything to Ella, and even though Aria wanted to tell, she’d thought that by keeping her dad’s secret, her parents would stay together.
For a long time, Their Ali was the only one who knew about her dad’s dalliances, and Aria had wished she didn’t. Ali used to tease her about it all the time, asking if Byron had had affairs with other girls, too. When Ali disappeared, Aria had been partly relieved—at least she couldn’t taunt her about the secret anymore. But it was lonely keeping the secret to herself, too. She’d tried to bury it deep, telling herself she was making a sacrifice for her family. In the end, though, her sacrifice didn’t matter. A had revealed the affair to Ella, and her parents had separated.
Aria passed a hanging scale and touched it lightly with her fingertips. Maybe this wasn’t worth dwelling on. It wasn’t like Ella and Byron were the perfect couple, anyway, even long before Meredith. They were nothing like, say, Noel’s parents. Nothing like what Aria wanted her and Noel to be.
She passed a bunch of bulbous, dark-purple eggplants and huge, fragrant bins of Thai basil and apple mint, and sampled a bite of sautéed Swiss chard from a woman in a Fresh Fields apron. At the end of the aisle, there was a small bin full of greens marked TATSOI. Aria grabbed a plastic bag from the dispenser and started to fill it up. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a woman by the heirloom tomatoes. She wore a swirled-print, Pucci-style dress, and had tanned skin, bushy eyebrows, and lots of makeup. There was something about her that reminded Aria of Noel’s father. This woman could be his sister.
As Aria moved closer, considering asking the woman where she got her dress—Ella would love it—the woman pivoted, revealing more of her face. Something suddenly soured inside Aria, and she ducked around the corner. After a moment, she snuck another peek at the woman’s face and gasped.
The woman wasn’t Mr. Kahn’s sister. She was Mr. Kahn.