I rest my head on his shoulder. “You’re a really good dad, you know.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but I can feel the split second when he doesn’t breathe, the words cementing themselves between us. I don’t look at him, because I get the sense he’d be embarrassed if I did.
“That’s what all the Father’s Day cards you gave me said,” he finally says, the slightest wobble in his voice.
I laugh, and we just sit like that for a little while, watching the boats go by on the water and the bikes go by on the path. At some point down the line there will be decisions to make. About this summer and precollege and whether this is the end of my search, or if I’ll pick it up again somewhere down the line. But it feels a little bit like an ending right now, or at the very least a reminder—there will always be something I’m looking for, the same way everybody does. But I already have what I need.
“So, should I … be taking you back to an internship?”
I pinch my eyes shut. “About that.”
“You … do have an internship, right?” my dad asks, that good old-fashioned parental alarm finally kicking back in. “You haven’t just been, like. Running all over the city since I’ve been gone?”
“Well, yeah. For the internship. That I had. Past tense.” I let out a sheepish laugh. “I might have … gotten into an argument with my boss.”
“Never a dull moment, huh?”
“Not a chance.” I sigh. “Is this the part where you tell me I should go back and apologize?”
“Seems like I don’t have to tell you,” he says. “But how about we grab some lunch at home?”
I hesitate for a moment. I know if we stand up right now and leave, a window will close. That I might be able to ask him about this again, but it will never be as open, as plain as it is in this moment now.
So I take a breath.
“If I hadn’t gone looking for her, would you ever have told me any of this?”
It’s easier now for him to answer, like all the other questions knocked down enough walls to make the answer to this one more clear. “I don’t know. The truth is, I wasn’t really sure how to tell you. It was easier to just … let it go.”
I nod, letting this sink in. I might understand where he’s coming from, but it’s not enough. There’s something still itching at me, something I need to know before we seal this up again and set it back on a shelf.
“I might still want to know who she is someday,” I tell him. “Will you be okay with that if I do?”
“Of course I will be. It’s you I worry about. Whenever that happens—I know it’ll be a lot to take in.” He puts his hand on top of mine. “But whatever you decide, I’m with you every step of the way.”
I nod quietly. “Thanks, Dad.”
At that his stomach grumbles, and we both laugh, grateful for something to break up the silence. Even then he waits me out, letting me decide whether or not I want the conversation to end. I reach for anything else to say, any other questions to ask, but I’m out of them. The only ones left are the kind I have to answer for myself.
So I stand up from the bench, swiping at the mascara under my eyes.
“Sandwiches?” my dad asks, following my lead.
We fall into step with each other, pointing ourselves home. “Can we pick up a box of Reese’s Puffs first?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The second stop on Millie’s Apology Tour is across the hall. My dad tells me he’ll knock in a few minutes when lunch is ready, so I steel myself, doing something I don’t often do without immediately bursting in right after: I knock on Teddy’s door.
It takes a few seconds for him to answer, and I hear voices in the apartment, so I know he’s not alone. I steel myself as the door swings open, but Teddy looks so relieved to see me that for once, he doesn’t even notice that I’m holding food.
“I’m sorry,” we both blurt at the same time.
I shake my head. “I’m the one who—”
“Yeah, but I—”
“Wow,” I laugh. “We’re really bad at this.”
Teddy runs a hand through his hair. “I guess we haven’t really had to apologize for anything before.”
I hand him the Reese’s Puffs box. “A … peace offering.”
“Oh, thank god,” says Teddy, accepting it. “I was down to my last three.”
“That’s dire.”
Teddy swings the door all the way open to reveal that Chloe is on the couch, a pair of giant headphones on her ears, frowning into Teddy’s laptop screen. There’s a Spotify playlist titled “Teddy’s Party Mix” that she seems to be carefully curating. She glances over and her whole face lights up when she sees me.
“Oh, hi,” she says, shutting the laptop. “Are you guys all good now?”
“Uh…” I usually have no trouble speaking on Teddy’s behalf—or anyone’s, really—but I want to hear it from him before I assume. Also, I’m not actually sure how much of this Chloe’s in the loop on.
“Yeah,” says Teddy. He looks at me sheepishly. “So, uh, Chloe knows about—”
“The Millie Mia,” she says, propping Teddy’s laptop on the couch. “He told me. And like, not because he was mad or anything, but because I told him about my mom’s weird Cooper love poems and I know you guys had some kinda fight last night because the energy was super weird and anyway, it all just kind of came out, so don’t be mad at Teddy, it’s mostly because I had a lot of questions.”
I blink, trying to process. I can see Teddy tense, his hand halfway in the cereal box, waiting to see how I’ll react.
“I mean, the whole thing’s kind of out in the open anyway,” I finally say. “Heather told my dad about the, uh—Millie Mia.”
“Yikes,” says Teddy, in a way that makes it clear we are going to dissect that whole conversation later.
Chloe hikes up her legs on the couch to make room for me to sit next to her. We’ve never sat three people to Teddy’s couch before, but I don’t mind it. We all seem to fit just fine.
“Wild that you found your mom, though,” says Chloe.
“Oh—I … actually, I didn’t.”
“What?” Teddy asks, his cheeks somehow already full of Reese’s Puffs.
“It’s not Steph.”
There’s this quiet beat where nobody says anything, and Teddy swallows his Puffs. “Well, shit,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
I shrug. “I don’t know if I am.”
Teddy tilts his head at me in acknowledgment, and I know we’re both thinking of that conversation we had about it the other day. How I could have ruled them all out much faster if I’d wanted to know. How I still could.
“And it’s not my mom, either.” Chloe seems surprisingly invested in this whole thing for someone who was just brought up to speed on it, but a second later it’s clear why. “For what it’s worth? It would have been all kinds of weird, but I wish she had been. Then we’d be sisters. I always wanted one of those.”