“I’ll hang this up in the hall closet, okay? I don’t think there’s much space in yours, and I don’t want it to wrinkle.”
When she whisks the garment bag out of the room, I seize my chance and back toward the front door. My hand on the knob, I call, “Lindy, I’ll be back after dinner, okay? Not too late! And then maybe we can talk about . . . prom shoes!” Then I’m out and away and free and gulping big, grateful breaths of freezing air, like a fish thrown back into the sea after finding itself caught in a net.
Though I was only making an excuse to investigate Todd Malachai with Jessa and Chad, it turns out the Prices really are making dinner when they let me in out of the rain. They invite me to eat with them, so I can’t exactly refuse. On a normal day I love eating with Jessa’s family, which is thoroughly normal and one I admit I’ve sometimes pretended was my own. Tonight, it’s all I can do to joke with them in the kitchen when I’ve got my freshest lead yet, waiting to be chased. For a minute I consider begging off, going back home, locking myself in my bedroom to try to find Todd myself. But I’ve gotten used to having partners these past few days. It didn’t even occur to me to look him up alone, and how weird is that?
“Up high, Immy.” Mr. Price holds his hand in prime high-five position, and though Jessa rolls her eyes, I slap his palm. He has the same white-blond hair as Chad, though he doesn’t have his son’s tan or sweet green eyes or flat stomach or awesome sense of humor. He’s just spectacularly, typically father-like. I can smell his familiar cologne over the tuna sizzling on their stovetop grill.
“How was your business trip?” I ask.
He scratches his neat beard. “France was enriching, as always.”
“It’s France.” Jessa cuts between us to dump a stack of modern-looking square bowls on the table. “It smells like old cheese.”
Swiveling on a barstool at the kitchen island, Chad snorts. “Really? That’s all you got out of France?”
“Yes, Chadwick. And the memory of the seagull that shit on you under the Arc de Triomphe. That was, like, such a Kodak moment.”
Dr. Van Tassel, looking spa-fresh, raps her spatula on the stove twice as a warning, but Chad slow-claps. “Oh, wow, Jenessa. Your worldly expertise is so wasted in Sugarbrook. You should go someplace where they’ll truly appreciate your international experience. Some kind of house of pancakes, maybe?”
Jessa starts to give him the finger, but sheathes it when Dr. Van Tassel barks, “Knock it off, or eat in the driveway!”
Mr. Price washes a lettuce head at the sink, unconcerned. And me, I stay out of the way in the corner, steal glances at their reflections in the stainless-steel counters and fridge and toasting/microwaving/can-opening/bottle-opening/popcorn-popping appliances, all polished into mirrors. From every angle, they look perfect. I watch them and try to imagine Dad and me and Sidonie Faye . . . and Lindy . . . crammed into our kitchen at 42 Cedar Lane, with its dark, dull cabinets, its banana magnets, our flour and sugar begrudgingly spilled into canisters. But I can’t picture my mom at the kitchen table, folding a napkin in her lap, buttering a roll. It’s too . . . normal.
I’m too anxious to eat much, but I sit with them for dinner: grilled tuna, garlic biscuits from Jeanne’s Cakes and Bakes (the only decent bakery in town since Jamison’s closed), and bowls of cold edamame. We teethe the beans from their pods and chuck the deflated green skins in our little square bowls. Chad and Jessa fight happily over the third-to-last and then second-to-last and then the last biscuit on the platter. Dr. Van Tassel continues to be super-size-nice, which means she knows that Dad continues to be absent, but it doesn’t bother me the way it once did. Mr. Price talks about the challenges of selling lighting equipment to other companies, which is the business he’s in, coincidentally.
When I’ve nervously ground my tuna into pink confetti and the food is mostly gone, we excuse ourselves from the table. Chad stays behind to throw everything into the dishwasher, flicking detergent water at his sister. He pauses to brush away a stray sud that catches in my hair before Jessa and I retreat up the stairs. “So you and Chadwick seem friendly, no? Had a good time in Fitchburg, did you?” she says.
I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face. “Friendly in the sense of friends, or friendly in the sense of prom dates?”
“Wait, what?” she shrieks, and wraps her fingers around my wrist and drags me into the bathroom of Bloody Mary to talk in secret, which seems unnecessary, since there’s ten feet of hallway between us and her bedroom at most. “How did this happen? When did this happen? You’re going to be my prom sister-in-law!”
“Okay, calm down.” I bite back another smile.