“She doesn’t have to stop unless you want her to.”
Natalie nodded again and, their unsteady truce established, called for her daughter, who obediently came running. So Hallie did occasionally have a sense of when she was pressing her luck. Natalie raised a hand in a silent wave as they turned toward home. “Keep me posted,” Natalie said. “Assuming you continue to lie low so unsuccessfully.” She smiled weakly.
Hallie twisted to look over her shoulder at Clara. “If you decide not to keep the dog, maybe you should see if Izzy wants him,” she called, her eyes intent.
Just as they both knew she was keeping the dog, they both knew Hallie was using him as a standin for what someone should really talk with Izzy about.
“Maybe I will,” she answered quietly. But Hallie was far enough away that she wasn’t sure the girl could hear.
24
Earth calling Iz … paging Iz … Rumor has it you’ve fallen off the face of the planet, but I’m calling anyway because we miss you at our girls’ nights. Any chance you might orbit back toward Springfield for the next one? Tell us when you can make it, and that’s when we’ll do it!
—Three-week-old voice mail from a cousin who was also in Penny’s wedding, undeleted but unreturned
Friday night, while her Freshly Squeezed colleagues attended the grand opening of a new comedy club in Dayton, and her neighbors filled the crisp windows-open-weather air with the clinks and clangs of dishes being done and the jangles of laughter being shared and the bangs and screeches of movies being streamed, strangers the world over were aching with yearning, and Izzy, frozen in front of her laptop when she should have been in the kitchen prepping for tomorrow’s brunch, ached and yearned along with them. She grieved with the family of a kindergartner who’d been caught under the wheels of his school bus, tears welling in her eyes as she flipped through the slide show of his five short years. She shook her head at the growing list of those who’d been claimed by a massive earthquake in Nepal, curling tighter in her chair as she watched footage of childless couples awaiting word on the fate of their unborn babies—the agency housing for their surrogate mothers reduced to rubble in the frame behind them. She prayed, though she was less and less sure if her idea of God matched anyone else’s, for hostages in a hotel overtaken by men wearing explosives in the name of a higher power.
Hours under all that heartbreak and strife left her properly put in her place. She had a home with a garden she’d made beautiful, ready to host a feast that, though decadent, was comfortably less than she could afford. She had neighbors who looked out for one another through those open windows of their living rooms and kitchens, even while inside they faced problems of their own. She had a good job with upbeat coworkers who many people less cynical than she would love to spend their mornings with. If she couldn’t face Penny, or Josh, or most of all her parents tomorrow with a genuine smile on her face, she would prove only that she was undeserving of their love.
Josh’s words from their last encounter had been on repeat in her mind, playing over unbidden at moments she least expected them. She heard him while driving to work with the glow of the dawn on the horizon, pounding her pedals down the bike trail with her breath heavy in her lungs, shampooing her hair in the white noise of her empty house: I didn’t think I’d be losing a friend. I thought I’d be gaining a sister.
The words were not just a picture of what might have been between them; they were an honest and befuddled encapsulation of what should have been. Worse, there was no real explanation for the fact that it had not been except for the truth—the one explanation that Izzy could not give and that, in the absence of any other plausible stand-in, Josh could very likely guess. She’d narrowly escaped their encounter with her ability to go on pretending intact. But she was going to have to do a better job, starting now.
Saturday morning she woke early to handle the preparations she should have done the night before. She had the new recipe she’d chosen all but memorized, having spent the week stocking the highest-quality ingredients she could find. While the oven preheated and she busied her hands whisking eggs and dicing vegetables, her mind rehearsed things she might say over the meal. She’d make them laugh, set them at ease. She’d talk about work. Just this week on Second Date Update they’d had a run of callers denied another chance for a host of left-field reasons: the man who’d booed a quarterback he didn’t know was his date’s favorite; the college student whose date had failed the good taste test by wanting to make out in a cemetery. “Deal breakers” was their shorthand for these calls at the station, as in these cases, it mattered not how hot the chemistry, how fluid the conversation, or how persuasive the disc jockeys. These daters evoked a strict one-strike rule that unnerved Izzy, if she was being honest, at her own prospects.
Maybe dating wasn’t such a good topic to bring up at brunch after all.
She could stick to local gossip, she supposed, but felt unsavory doing so. Her mother had called Izzy in a flurry after recognizing her street on the news, but Izzy quickly rebuked her questions, brushing the incident aside as a nasty divorce blown out of proportion. She didn’t want her parents to worry, to think anything about her new living situation unstable or unsafe.
She popped the quiche into the oven and raced upstairs to don her sundress, which she layered over leggings and topped with a cardigan. It seemed a very Yellow Springs sort of outfit, one she hoped would exude a bohemian independence, and she pulled her hair back in a loose ponytail that was nothing if not nonchalant. Looking in the mirror, she almost convinced herself that she was entirely at home in her new lifestyle. Even as the host, she’d somehow come to feel like the guest among the rest of her family, but she knew the fault was her own. Today would be different.
And why had she been wasting time worrying over the conversation, anyway? The rest of them had far more interesting things to contribute. She’d pepper them with questions; she’d be so engaged in the baby and her parents’ new condo and anything else they deemed of import that they wouldn’t even notice she hadn’t said a thing about her own life. She’d taken note of this technique watching the most popular girl in her high school, back when she’d longed to be one. Ask everyone around you about themselves, and they’ll love you for it, no matter that they don’t learn a thing about you in return.
Come to think of it, Kristin had reminded her a lot of that girl.
Out in the garden, Izzy put up the umbrella to shade the full morning sun and felt a rush of pleasure as she carried out her new place mats and votives. The five of them would fit comfortably around the circle, and her arrangement of the table came together with a refined, simple beauty that, for once, was just as she’d imagined. She was topping the yogurt parfaits with berries and fresh granola when the doorbell sounded. She glanced at her watch. Her parents were five minutes early, which for them was right on time.
“Oh, Izzy, look at all this! Your house looks just as pretty as you are.”
Izzy stood at the open door and looked around the front yard in search of what “all this” might be. “Thanks, Mom, but I haven’t changed anything out front since you moved me in.”