“And you believe her.”
“She’s always wanted to. It’s just . . . taken her a while to get there.”
She’s always wanted to. Those words send me into another spiral. When my first boyfriend dumped me after a homecoming dance because he thought I wasn’t fun enough, and she asked what I’d done to drive him away. “We’re too much for them,” she told me, and I believed her. When my college boyfriend, a guy named Michael I’d only been dating for a few weeks, dumped me because I spilled everything to him—my mother, therapy, my new antidepressants—and he said he wasn’t ready to be in a serious relationship with me.
From that point on, I vowed to keep it all hidden, to be the shiny happy person I became on TV.
“How do you know all of this?” I ask, tugging a crocheted blanket around my legs. “You’ve been talking about it with her?”
“I’m, uh, her emergency contact.”
“Right.” I stiffen, trying to tell myself I shouldn’t feel hurt by this. He’s the older sibling, after all.
It’s been gradual, letting her calls go to voice mail and leaving her texts unanswered for days at a time. She doesn’t even know about my breakup yet. My current therapist, Joanna, advised making space so I can focus on myself, since she’s so good at dragging me down. Even if sometimes I wish we had a relationship that enabled us to get margaritas or go to brunch together, it’s not unusual for months to go by without hearing from her, and when she reappears, for it to only be with bad news.
“I want to support her,” I say quietly. “I want her to get better. I do. I just . . . I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time believing it. Why now, after all these years?”
What I don’t say: we weren’t enough for her.
He nudges my foot with his latke-patterned sock. “The best we can do right now is be there for her, and be ready to keep supporting her when she comes home. She’s taking personal leave from work.” She’s been at Boeing for decades, working her way up to a job as an executive assistant. “This place has regular visitor hours, and I was thinking of going soon. I know it would mean a lot to her if you came, too. She still watches you,” he continues. “Almost every day.”
This is a lot to process. I pull the blanket tighter around myself, the emotion I’ve been fighting off for the past week threatening to surface. “I’m not sure I can decide right now. I get that she’s dealing with something huge, but she’s been dealing with it for years, Alex. And we didn’t matter enough to her for her to get help when we were kids, or when we were teens, or when we finally moved out of the house. So I’m sorry if I’m a little low on sympathy for her at the moment.”
“I get it.” He throws an arm around my shoulders and gives me a gentle hug. He’s a good caretaker. A good dad. “I get it, and it’s shitty. Whatever you decide to do, I support you. One hundred percent.”
“I appreciate that,” I say, meaning it. “I’ll let you know.”
After a few more minutes, Javier appears at the foot of the stairs. “Cassie’s demanding a bedtime story from her favorite aunt. You up for it?”
“Of course,” I say, and even though I hope it’ll feel natural once I see my niece, I turn on the smile before I head upstairs.
7
FORECAST:
A gentle breeze of an evening interrupted by a sharp gust of reality
“SO WE’RE REALLY going to Parent Trap our bosses,” I say, hoping it’ll sound more believable once it’s out of my mouth. Nope. Still absurd.
“We really are.” Russell leans across the table at the Ballard taqueria we picked because it’s always busy and we didn’t want anyone to overhear us. “Look at this,” he says, showing me his phone. It’s an article from when Torrance was hired at KSEA, a fluff piece about the Hales’ plans to revitalize the station. “Proof that they were happy once.”
She and Seth are sitting at the anchor desk, looking not at the camera but at each other. It’s not tough to fake a smile for the camera, but the joy in their eyes? The way Seth is gazing at her, all pride and adoration? That’s real.
Russell swipes to another photo.
“Is that a picture of them . . . swing dancing?” Maybe it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given the moves they busted out at the holiday party. In this photo, they look like they’re from another era: Torrance’s blond hair in pin curls and Seth in a fedora. He’s holding her in a dramatic dip, her back arched at what should be an impossible angle.
The thought Are we really doing this? has been running through my head on a near-constant loop. Every time I wonder whether this is too manipulative, I remember what Torrance said the night of the party. Somewhere beneath the barbs and bravado are two people who used to be in love with each other. We’re just going to give them a push.
And if it’s also a way to distract myself from what’s happening with my mother, well, that’s just a bonus.
I crunch down on a tortilla chip and slide the phone back to Russell, who’s in a green sweater beneath a deep caramel corduroy jacket with elbow patches. Combined with his rectangular glasses and stubble along his jaw, he looks like a professor who stays long past his office hours to make sure every one of his students understands the material because that’s just how much he cares.
“We’ll keep digging.” After work, I took off my camera makeup and changed into jeans and a striped cardigan. It makes this feel less like a work meeting and more like—well, I’m not sure what to call it. A plot-a-thon? A scheme sesh? “But I think we need to lay out what we know about them, so we can get a better sense of who they are.”
Russell opens up a notes app on his phone, motions for me to continue.
“I’ve worked for Torrance for three years,” I say. “She’s good at what she does. Obviously. And she’s passionate about weather and science. She loves doing charity work, mostly environmental causes. She likes flowers but prefers succulents. She only drinks oat milk because she doesn’t do dairy and she’s allergic to soy. On occasion, she will tolerate hemp milk. Her lipstick never budges or transfers, and before I die, I swear to god I will find out how she does it.” I allow myself space to take a breath and keep racking my brain. “She and Seth have one son, Patrick. I think he works in tech? His wife Roxanne is about to have a baby.”
“That’s a good start,” Russell says as he types.
“What do we know about Seth?”
“He likes to have a hand in everything going on in the newsroom, but sometimes he goes a little overboard. Gets too involved. Everything has to be just so, or he loses it.” He dunks a chip in salsa. “Uh . . . let’s see. He gets takeout from that Greek place on Vine at least once a week. Oh, and he loves Garamond—that’s what all his signs are typed in. Like he thinks it’ll make them less aggressive because Garamond is such an innocuous font.”
“I do like Garamond. It’s professional, but in a friendly way.” I reach for another chip. “So this is what we’ve got. Fonts and milk.”