“They’re not a family,” I say quietly. “And Alex is nothing like his father.”
Dougie makes a disbelieving face. “He is just as ambitious. That much was made obvious during the BTH presentation.”
In a split-second decision that I quite literally make on my way out the door, I decide to poke the bear. “Yes, well, I suppose that kind of professional drive isn’t for everyone. I hear you’re planning to retire soon?”
Dougie narrows his eyes. “That’s not for you to know.”
“Well. Anyway.”
My hand sticks out for him to shake. He raises an eyebrow but places his palm in mine. I think about leaving it alone—and part of me still wants to—but Tracy’s words ring out clear and powerful, urging me on: You tried your best to break a pattern of complicity. That’s something to be proud of.
“This is the way you should have greeted me at that Yankees happy hour,” I say. “And I am the last person who should have to teach you this.”
His purple face goes violet—all fear, no room left for retaliatory, finger-wagging anger—and the only word I manage to think as I walk away is Good.
* * *
I kept it together the whole day until now. I thought for sure he’d want to see me—even if it was only to say goodbye—but Alex didn’t even give me that. On the subway back to Brooklyn Heights, I full-on melt down in tears. Beside me, Brijesh doesn’t say a word. He just rubs my back and waits out the five minutes it takes me to be able to breathe normally again.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Brijesh says softly, “he’s been a walking ghost.”
I sigh. “Am I a horrible person if that does make me feel a little better?”
Brijesh laughs. “It makes you an honest one.”
When Miriam gets home from the hospital, all three of us go eat together one last time at the same place we went the night I introduced them.
“You got my shared note of East London restaurants?” Brijesh asks.
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll go somewhere new every week, sit at the bar until someone with impeccable taste in food forces me into his friendship.”
Brijesh grins, spinning a lock of Miriam’s hair around his finger. “Fate.”
“Coercion,” I counter.
“Fate,” Miriam agrees.
* * *
My flight is at 10:00 P.M. Miriam and Brijesh want to stay with me until then, but I have to call my parents and I want to be alone doing it, so I hug and kiss them goodbye after dinner and tell Miriam to sleep at Brijesh’s place.
In our apartment, I say goodbye to silly inanimate things, like my air-conditioning unit and the stove we’ve never turned on. Just for fun, I try to turn it on now and realize it doesn’t even work, which makes a gurgle of deranged laughter peal out of me.
I sit on the floor, legs crossed, and call Dad. Jerry’s holding the phone, but it’s pointed at Dad, who is holding a guitar and waving.
“Hi, guys.”
“I wrote a song for you, honey,” says Dad. “Want to hear it?”
“Is it going to make me cry?”
“You’re already crying,” Jerry notes dryly.
“I’m having a moment.”
Jerry snorts. “Is this like your teenage years when you would look out the window whenever it was raining and listen to sad music on purpose?”
My lips quirk. “A little.”
“Oh, then this’ll be perfect,” Jerry extrapolates. “Play the song, Marty!”
It’s in the realm of “Cinderella” by Steven Curtis Chapman or “My Wish” by Rascal Flatts. Slow and melodic, deep and achy, and halfway through, I realize I’ve heard scraps of this song before. A string of chords after my high school graduation, a lyric in the car ride home from Baskin-Robbins. I can hear this song, that day, on the front patio when Jerry explained to me that I like sure things. Or that I used to, anyway.
I think maybe Dad’s been working on this song my whole life.
I hold it together through the lyrics about the little girl he took backstage with him at concerts, eyes sparkling at the pretty lights but quiet all the same. But I break down in tears that push hard against my eyes when he gets to the part about how I learned to trust the sound of my own voice: singing to myself in a room all alone, him and Jerry one wall away, out of sight but there to catch me if I faltered.
And I just really hope he knows. I hope he knows he’s the best dad in the world, and I’m not running away. I’m just trusting the sound of my own voice, like he taught me. I hope he knows I loved sharing music with him as a kid, even though I flaked on the talent show, even though I can’t make it like he does.
But just because you don’t make art doesn’t mean you don’t inspire it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The thing I never took into consideration when I envisioned myself moving abroad was doing it with a broken heart. It colors everything in a different shade.
My hotel room has a canopy bed and green velvet cushions on the window seat. It is quaint and luxurious without being opulent, only a couple of blocks away from Covent Garden. The bedding is itchy, and I almost ask the maid not to change it anymore after the first night when I come back from exploring to freshly stiff sheets, but I’m not exaggerating when I say she’s my best friend right now, and saying hello to her in the mornings is the most human interaction I have all day. I can live with itchy sheets for another two weeks.
My fourth day in London—after a coffee from a fancy espresso place that’s honestly terrible, a FaceTime with Miriam, a tour of an apartment I can’t afford in Shoreditch followed by a tour of an apartment I can probably afford in Clapham—I break down in tears and ask myself what the hell I was thinking.
It’s not that I don’t love London, because I can already feel the city marking me the same way I felt when I first moved to New York. Every neighborhood is busting at the seams with individualist personality, and the history is almost tangible. But this is a place where he lived first. No matter where I go, I feel like an intruder. Like something unwanted.
I read four books in four days. Some meals I eat at restaurant bars—which hasn’t bothered me since my college days—and some I take to go so I can eat in bed with the TV for company. I email Gran to let her know I’m in town （I omit telling her I’ve moved here; that will probably go over better in person）。
Did you download Bumble BFF yet??? Join a gym? Employee resource group?? Meet a kind stranger in a bookstore? Miriam texts me.
Give me some time to miss human interaction and then we’ll see, I text back.
On Friday, I have lunch with my new boss, Sinclair Austin （who I am not going to idolize beyond human fallibility the way I idolized Tracy）。 But despite my best efforts, I like her instantly. She has blue streaks in her black hair and is curvy, short, and engaged to be married to a woman named Austin （ha）。 She doesn’t even make fun of me when I mispronounce items on the café menu.
After we eat, she takes me on a tour of our office building, shows me the desk I’ll be claiming after orientation next Monday.
“What’s your first impression of the city?” she asks.
I smile at her, internally cataloging that Brits call London “the city” the same way New Yorkers call Manhattan “the city.” I’m gathering details one at a time to flesh this place out until I know it enough to call it home.