“Is that a trick or hack or something?” I ask her. “What you said a minute ago about feeling her head?”
“No, her head just didn’t feel warm enough.”
“What’s warm enough?”
“How she normally feels.” She yawns again. “Sorry. She sleeps through the night most of the time. But when she doesn’t…”
I wait, but she says nothing more. I gaze around the room, at the crib and queen-size bed. It felt like a lot more space when I visited a year ago, when we were all still in high school.
“Isn’t it weird,” Angie says, “to think about the last time you were here?” She stares up at the ceiling.
“So much has changed since then,” we say at the same time, then laugh.
“I know I sent a text,” Angie says, “but I want to say in person I’m sorry about Finn.”
“It’s his baby,” I say.
Angie laughs so loud she covers her mouth. I’m startled enough that the pain of thinking about Finny is stunted.
“Yeah, of course it is,” she says and giggles. “I mean, who else?” She sits up and looks at me.
I raise my eyebrows. “Some people would have guessed Jamie.”
Angie shakes her head. “You were never going to do it with Jamie. Anyone could see that.”
“I would have,” I say. “If he hadn’t cheated on me.”
“Nope.” Angie’s voice has a finality like her certainty while talking about her daughter. “It wasn’t there with you guys.”
I can’t disagree, but I don’t like her seeing something in me that I didn’t know about myself. If it was obvious to her that our relationship wasn’t meant to last, how dense was I to have missed it?
“How did you know it was Finny’s though?” I ask. “We haven’t seen each other in months. I could have met someone new.”
“No way.”
“I don’t see why that’s an impossibility,” though I don’t know why I’m protesting.
Angie gets off the floor and comes to sit next to me on the couch.
“It was obvious at the hospital after Guinnie was born that something had already happened with you guys,” she says, but I shake my head.
“We were only friends then.”
Angie rolls her eyes so hard that it looks like it hurts.
“You guys were never just friends, Autumn, and you know it.” She studies my face. “You know that everyone knew, right?”
“I didn’t know that there was anything to know,” I say in a daze.
“You didn’t know that Finn Smith was into you?” She says it like I’m telling her I don’t know my middle name.
“You really didn’t know?” he asked me that last night.
“I thought you never talked about it because you were embarrassed,” Angie says.
“Embarrassed by what?”
“Well, for years, I thought you were embarrassed because he was like a brother to you or whatever? But then I started noticing how you both did the animal thing with each other.”
“The what?”
“Like, have you ever seen an animal see another animal?”
“Have I ever seen an—”
Angie puts both hands up to stop me. “You remember my dog, Bowie, at my parents’ house? Whenever I walked him and he saw another dog, he would go real still, and the other dog would too. It was like you could see the million thoughts going on in their brains. And then suddenly, they’d either want to fight or play. Whenever you and Finn Smith would see each other, at school or the mall or whatever, you guys would freeze for a split second. And then you would be moving and talking again, but it was like part of you was still frozen, waiting for the other person to do something.”
Flashes of memories assault me, a montage without music. Finny. My Finny. I cannot speak. Angie doesn’t seem to expect anything from me though.
“After a while, I was like, okay, she’s going to break up with Jamie and be with Finn,” Angie says. “But you never did. I thought maybe your moms didn’t want you dating or something.”
“No,” I whisper. “I just didn’t know it was an option.”
“That’s really sad,” Angie says gently. “But obviously, you had some time together.” She motions with her eyes towards my midsection.
“A day. Or rather a half a night and then a day.”
“Oh, Autumn.” The weight of him, smell of him, of Finn—