“Don’t mention it.” His eyes were intent on his work, but he tossed a smile up in my direction. “We missed you last weekend, by the way.”
“What?” I asked, at the same time Emily made a hissing noise from the dining room, and we both turned to her, where she was holding one of the cabinet doors and shaking her head frantically at Simon.
“What?” Simon asked her, then he blinked as something seemed to register. “Oh,” he said, glancing at me. “Crap.”
“What’s going on?” I asked again, and Emily sighed elaborately.
“Last weekend,” she explained. “We had a thing. At Jackson’s.”
“Oh.” I took a second to absorb that and tried to decide if I was sad to have not been invited. Plans were the worst, honestly, and I loved when I could decline them. But to not have been invited in the first place still hurt. That made no sense, but I had no explanation.
“Yeah, it was . . .” Emily looked down at the floor, over to the side, down at the cabinet door in her hands.
Now it was Simon’s turn to sigh. “It was Mitch’s birthday.” He looked right up at me as he spoke, and I appreciated his forthrightness. “A bunch of us got together.”
“Oh,” I said again. I hadn’t even known when Mitch’s birthday was, or that I’d missed it. Would I have texted him, wished him a happy birthday even though we weren’t friends anymore? Would I have gone out with the group, nursed a drink at the bar while gazing at him across the room, wishing I still had the right to be in his orbit? I couldn’t even be upset with him; it wasn’t like he’d cast me out of his life. I’d done that all on my own. “Well, I hope y’all had fun.” The last screw came free, and I tugged the door from the cabinet, handing it down to Emily as she passed up the new one.
Simon shrugged as we wrestled the door into place. “It was Jackson’s on a weekend. You know.” He and I shared a look, because I did know. He liked going out about as much as I did, but he was with Emily, so sometimes he had no choice.
“Yeah,” Emily said. “It was fine. The karaoke got a little out of hand, though.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “Worse than usual?”
“Ohhh, yeah,” Simon replied. One eyebrow went up, though he kept his attention on the work. “Unless you’ve seen Mitch sing karaoke before.”
A horrified laugh bubbled out of me before I could check it. “I . . . have not.” But I had listened to his singing on our trip to Virginia. That had been bad enough. The idea of him joyfully leaping onstage and subjecting a crowd to it was . . . well, it was very Mitch. I couldn’t decide if the thought made me want to laugh or cry.
“？‘Mr. Brightside,’？” Emily confirmed, her voice making an attempt at solemnity. “But kind of angry.”
Oh. Scratch the “joyfully leaping onstage” part, then. “That’s an angry song, though.”
“Okay, angry and a little bit teary at the same time.” Emily shuddered with the memory. “It was not great.”
“Yeah, he was definitely working something out up there,” Simon added.
All I could offer in response was a wince. I didn’t want to think about Mitch and what he may or may not have been going through on his angry-sad karaoke birthday. He was no longer my concern, remember?
I scrambled to change the subject, because I didn’t want to think about Mitch anymore, period. “How goes the dog search? That’s still happening, right?” Emily had said a while back that they were planning to adopt a dog in the fall, but hadn’t mentioned it since. Maybe they’d changed their minds?
“Good,” Emily said, while Simon said, “Terrible,” at the same time. They both sighed. “We keep looking at rescues online, but this one”—Simon nodded his head toward his wife—“wants to apply for all of them. Our place isn’t that big.”
“Plus I think technically we can only have so many dogs in one house. Some stupid local ordinance or something,” Emily said. “But we’ll narrow it down soon.”
“Either that or you can just get a bigger place.” I hopped down off the counter as Emily looked at me, horrified.
“Oh, hell no. We just moved. I don’t want to go through that ever again.”
“Agreed.” Simon tightened the last hinge screws with a loud rattle of the screw gun. “Packing is a pain in the ass.”
I groaned as I got a glimpse of my future. My future had a lot of boxes in it. “I haven’t even thought about that yet.”
“Don’t worry. We can help with that too.” Simon joined us in the dining room and we all looked into the kitchen at our progress.
“Thanks,” I said. The new cabinet doors were a perfect match for my kitchen, but looking at them brought me no joy. I thought having them installed would make me feel better. But they just made me think of Mitch. Everything did these days.
I needed to sell this house and get the hell out of here.
* * *
? ? ?
Everything Caitlin wanted to bring to college fit into my SUV, but just barely. Emily and her Jeep were on standby, but my daughter and I were able to make the trip with just the two of us. The way we’d done almost everything else in her life. It seemed fitting.
A whirlwind of registration forms, key collecting, and endless trips up and down two flights of stairs later, I had done my cardio for the month, and my daughter was moved into her new dorm room.
“Mom?” Caitlin had been checking out the view from her window, but now she turned to me, her voice small. “Thanks.”
“Of course. Did you think I was going to let you move into your dorm alone?” I put my hands on my hips and surveyed our progress. She was about ninety percent unpacked; we’d put most of her clothes away, and her bed was made up with those special extra-long dorm room sheets. Something that hadn’t changed since my own college days. Books and snacks were piled on her desk to be dealt with later. Her pillows had been plumped, and her faithful stuffed rabbit lounged in the middle of them.
It was the rabbit that did it. I couldn’t count the number of times that she’d thrown Mr. Ears out of the stroller when she was a toddler. The road trips we’d taken with him on her lap. His fur was worn thin and he hadn’t been fluffy in years, but he was still her favorite thing. Caitlin was all grown up now, but my little girl was still in there somewhere. And I was just leaving her here, on her own. It didn’t feel right. I wanted to throw her in the SUV and drive the hell away from here.
“No, I don’t mean that. Well, I do mean that, and thank you. But . . .” She tugged on her ponytail, tightening it. “I mean for everything. Just . . . just everything.” She walked across the room and her arms wrapped around me in a hug so tight that it squeezed those threatening tears from my eyes.
“Hey.” I held her close, one last big hug from Mom before she started college. She could do this. I could do this. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. You know that.”
She nodded against my shoulder but didn’t let go yet. “You’re my favorite mom.”
My laugh was watery but, goddammit, I was not going to cry in front of my daughter. She didn’t need that. Not when her life was about to begin. “You’re my favorite kid. My all-time favorite.”