“What?” She whipped around to look at me. “A guy? Like, romantically?”
I saw the disapproval written across Elizabeth’s face, and I changed tack. The urge to confess came so strongly, but the lie came easily, too. “Oh…um, no. Not like that. We’ve just been spending time together. Friends. I don’t know what it is.”
Elizabeth nodded, turning back to the road. She had always liked Evan, and I felt bad dumping this on her. But she was also my sister, and she knew me better than anyone did. She may not have liked what I was saying, what I was implying, but I think she understood what lay behind it.
After a long silence, she piped up again. “Hey, can you let Pepper out? Mom asked me to walk him.”
“So why don’t you walk him?”
“I’m just dropping you off. This girl from school is having a thing. Mom and Dad are at that party at the Fletchers’. I didn’t know I was going to have to pick you up.”
“Well, thanks for squeezing me in.”
“I’m just saying. I have other plans.”
“Yeah, well, so do I.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Well, I had the option to have plans. One of my boarding-school friends had started an e-mail chain suggesting that anyone in Boston for the holidays meet up at a local bar on Wednesday night. It seemed better than sitting alone in our empty house, waiting for everyone else to return. I’d been doing that too much this past summer in New York. “I’m meeting up with some Andover people at Finnegan’s.”
“Finnegan’s! Yikes. Have fun with that.”
Elizabeth dropped me off, and I found the spare key under the planter. Pepper, our black Lab, was in his crate in the mudroom off the kitchen. His tail thumped as I fiddled with the latch, then he burst out and collided with me. He nuzzled his wet snout into my palms.
“I love you, too, Pepper,” I said. “Let’s go outside, okay?”
Pepper had been my and Elizabeth’s dog. When we were younger, we alternated taking him on short, lazy walks. Suddenly I was thirteen years old again: the cold air, the sparkle of the stars overhead, the warm glow of windows in the dark, walking Pepper between homework and bed. Running through dates of battles or lines of Shakespeare or base pairs of DNA. Worrying about grades. Worrying about getting into a good college. I had never bothered to worry about what came after that. No one told me to worry. Surely another rung on the ladder awaited, and wouldn’t that next part be just like every other part? Pepper sniffed around the base of a tree. He didn’t tug at his leash the way he used to. He was an old dog, I realized, almost ten. He only had a few good years left.
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes when we got back inside. I’d been feeling strange all week. “You want a treat, Peps?” I said, brightening my voice. He wagged his tail. The clock on the microwave in the kitchen said it was just after 8:30 p.m. The group had planned to meet at Finnegan’s by eight.
My parents had taken my dad’s car to the party at the Fletchers’, which left me with my mother’s Volvo. I wondered, for a moment, whether I wanted to do this. Drink bad beer and eat greasy food with people I didn’t really care about. Maybe for once I’d be better off at home, by myself. Put on a pot of tea, curl up with a book, run a bath. Embracing instead of fleeing the solitude. I hesitated, about to switch off the ignition. Then my phone buzzed with a text from one of the lacrosse girls: Great! See you in a few! I put the car into drive and headed for the bar.
*
I thought things at work might have improved after the gala, but the only person altered by the news was Eleanor. She floated in late every morning, smugger than ever, leaving for lunch and often not returning. But Laurie was the same as always. A heavy cloud trailed her as she passed back and forth in front of my desk.
Laurie was on the phone around ten days before Thanksgiving. It was a quiet afternoon, and if I stopped the clatter of my typing, I could just make out what she was saying to the person on the other end.
“Well, I can’t get in the middle of this. It’s not my place.”
Silence. I squinted at my computer screen in case someone walked by.
“I’m trying.” She was nearly whispering. “I’m just trying to keep this place running. What else can I do?”
Laurie hung up, sighed loudly, and walked out of her office. She flung her coat over her shoulders. “Julia, I’m leaving for the day,” she said. “If anything comes up, call my cell.” When she disappeared into the lobby, I reached for my wallet. I still had Sara Yamashita’s business card from the night of Nick’s party. I ran my finger along the edge of the thick card stock, thinking.
“Are you kidding?” Abby said to me. This was a few days later, the weekend before Thanksgiving. We were at a Mexican place on the Upper East Side. She swiped a tortilla chip through the guacamole. “You should call her. Absolutely.”
“It doesn’t seem too pushy?”