It was back. The feeling that something—he didn’t know what—was missing. The feeling that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be, even though, as far as he knew, he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Everett shook his head and stared at himself in the mirror, waiting for the feeling to pass. He waited. And waited.
It didn’t pass.
He frowned at himself. “Buck up, you idiot,” he told himself, which made him feel like a fraud, because he would absolutely destroy someone who told any of his child viewers something like that.
He decided to try a different approach. “It’s okay to feel your feelings,” he told his reflection, which only made him frown further. Because how the hell was he supposed to feel a feeling if he didn’t know what it was?
9
As an adult, Teddy wasn’t delusional. She knew, logically, that her parents had faced down years of discord and animosity and made the correct decision to separate. She knew that her dad simply wasn’t a good parent and that his move to California was no big loss. California could have him.
But years and years of avoiding making her own decisions had worn a groove into her brain, like the way sitting on one couch cushion leaves behind a butt imprint that you roll into whenever you watch television. After a while, Teddy forgot how to decide things for herself or who “herself” even was. She made friends after Vicki, but she kept everything on the surface level—there were people she had lunch with, people she studied with, and people she occasionally went shopping with, but no one was ever allowed to get too deep. The last thing she needed was full-scale ostracizing again.
When she got to college (OSU, of course, because that was where her mother thought she should go), with its sprawling campus, tens of thousands of students, and classes on virtually anything she could ever want to learn, she panicked. She stared at everyone else striding purposefully across campus and wondered how they knew. How did they have so much confidence in what they wanted? Teddy would think back to that little girl, hell on wheels, and wonder what she would’ve done. But at this point, Teddy didn’t know anymore. Thinking about herself as a child was like thinking about a stranger.
Of course, things fell into place when she met Richard. Suddenly, she had a purpose—Richard’s purpose. And as long as she did what he wanted, she’d never have to make another decision again.
Today, she winced as she cradled an apple crisp and walked up her mother’s porch stairs, the same ones she’d walked up with her broken arm all those years ago. But this time, her wince wasn’t because of the physical pain; it was because she was here for dinner (an extremely early dinner, because Sophia and Craig liked to start their children’s bedtime routines no later than six thirty p.m.) and knew she’d have to tell her mom and sister about her breakup, and probably hear them lament what a great guy Richard was and how Teddy was a fool to let him go.
She gave a courtesy knock and walked in to find Sophia standing in the foyer, staring blankly into space.
“Hi,” Sophia said in a whisper. “We’re still potty training Liam and I needed a moment of peace and quiet by myself and— Oh, your hair.”
Sophia stepped toward her sister with sympathy in her eyes and wrapped her in a hug.
“Does it look that bad?” Teddy asked, her voice muffled in Sophia’s shoulder. It had been so long since her sister had hugged her that it should’ve felt awkward, but it didn’t; she relaxed into the hug, feeling like they were little girls sharing a bed again.
“No, you look hot,” Sophia said, pulling back to study Teddy’s face. “You know who you look like? What’s that French movie with the cute girl who runs around Paris helping people? And there’s, like, accordion music?”
“Are you trying to say I look like Amélie?” Teddy asked. “Because I don’t.”
“You kind of do.”
“My bangs are way longer,” Teddy protested, but Sophia cut in.
“Okay, fine. Listen, I haven’t seen a movie in like . . . five years. All I’m saying is, your haircut is cute, but if it means what I think it means, I’m sorry.”
“Mommy?”
Liam was now standing in the foyer, wearing a T-shirt but no pants or underwear.
“I have to potty,” he said.
“Where’s my husband,” Sophia muttered, then screamed, “CRAIG? WHERE ARE YOU?” so loud that Teddy jumped.
Sophia waited a second, then sighed and grabbed Liam’s hand. “Okay, let’s get you to the potty.”
“I’ll be . . . in the kitchen,” Teddy said to Sophia’s retreating back, but her sister was already focusing on Liam. It wasn’t like Teddy thought that here, in her mother’s foyer next to her pantsless nephew, was where she and Sophia were finally going to reconnect and have a real conversation, but she felt disappointed all the same.
Teddy wandered into the kitchen, where her mom was plating a huge salad. “Hey, honey, could you grab me a—” her mom started.
And then she turned around and stopped midsentence. “Your hair!”
“Okay, why does everyone keep saying it like that?” Teddy asked. “It’s not like I showed up with a face tattoo of a curse word. It’s not that shocking.”
“No. Of course not.” Her mom smiled thinly. She didn’t ask where Richard was, Teddy realized, because Richard rarely came with her to family dinners. He was always, of course, too busy.
“Grab me the salad tongs, will you?” her mother asked. “Oh, did you bring a dessert? So nice, Teddy. Everything’s ready. Let’s go sit down.”
“Sure.” Teddy put the apple crisp on the kitchen counter. She wasn’t fazed by her mother’s rapid-fire, scattershot way of speaking—as usual, her mother had about one million things on her mind and felt the need to say them all at once. Teddy found the tongs in the same drawer they’d been in since she could remember and followed her mother into the dining room, where Sophia, Craig, and the kids were seated. Liam was, by this point, wearing pants.
“Your hair is short,” Emma said bluntly.
“Sure is,” said Teddy.
“Okay, let’s eat!” her mother said, clapping her hands.
Everyone passed around the dishes, and for a moment, things were quiet. And then Teddy broke the silence with “Richard and I broke up.”
For a moment, no one said anything. And then Craig, with his fork halfway to his mouth, asked, “But we didn’t like that guy, right?”
“Craig!” Sophia barked.
Craig looked to Teddy’s mom for support. “Right? I mean, he never came over here. He made fun of my job—”