“It’s not so bad,” she said, watching their plane appear out the window, inching toward the accordion-like jet bridge. It always struck her as extraordinary that the distance between Columbus and New York could be covered in just a couple short hours. Most of the time, it felt like the two places existed in entirely different universes.
Beside her, Luke sat up a little. “You can’t be serious,” he said, his accent getting thicker, as it always did when he said something snarky. “I can’t even picture you living there when you were a kid. Never mind now.”
“I’m not saying I’d want to—I’m just saying it’s not so bad.”
“What? The suburbs?”
“No,” she said. “Coming home.”
“There are fifteen thousand kilometers between me and my parents,” he said with a smirk, “and that’s still not enough.”
She didn’t know it then, but that was the first loose thread.
From across the table, Mary is still watching her expectantly.
“It wasn’t meant to be,” Greta tells her.
“Well, that,” her dad says, “or you didn’t want it to be.”
“Conrad,” Mary admonishes him in the exact same tone that Helen would’ve used, and Greta gives her a grateful smile. But it’s not a surprise. And it’s nothing new.
She turns to her dad, whose collar is wrinkled now that her mom isn’t here to iron it for him. He’s looking at her the same way he’s been looking at her for twenty years: like she’s a math problem he can’t quite work out.
“What?” he says, like he isn’t trying to pick the same fight they’ve had about a thousand times. It’s not about Luke. It’s not even really about her settling down, though that’s part of it. It’s that the life he wants for her is fundamentally different from the life she wants for herself, and music is the boat that’s forever carrying her away from it.
“You didn’t even like him,” Greta says, and though her voice is light, there’s something unmistakably steely underneath it.
“But you did,” Conrad points out. “So I don’t really understand what happened.”
What happened, she wants to say, is that her mom died. What happened is that Helen went into a coma, and the world turned inside out.
But that’s only part of it, of course. That’s the cause.
Here’s the effect:
Greta had been in the middle of a show at the time, a sixty-minute set at a music festival in Berlin, and when her brother kept calling and calling, Luke was the one to pick up her phone. By the time she’d finished playing, he’d booked her a flight to Columbus.
“Just me?” she asked, the shock of it coursing through her as she stood with him backstage afterward, still sweaty and jangly from the show, still trying to absorb the news.
He looked surprised by the question, which was ridiculous. They’d been together for two years by then, and this, she’d assumed, is what people do in situations like these; this is what it’s supposed to mean to have a partner.
“Well,” he said, running a hand through his hair. The next band had come on, and outside the tent, they could hear the dull roar of applause. “I mean, it’s a family thing, right? I wasn’t sure you’d want me there.”
She stared at him. “So, what, you’re just going back to New York?”
“No,” he said, and at least he had the good sense to look embarrassed. “I figured as long as I’m here, I might as well stay for the rest of the festival.”
That, she wants to say, is what happened.
Or, at least, that was the start of it.
Luke might have lit the match, but Greta was the one who burned everything to the ground a week later. She can’t say that to her dad, though. So instead she says, “It’s complicated.”
Conrad raises an eyebrow. “Not really. It’s the same thing that always happens. You date someone for a while, then get bored and break it off.”
“It’s not that simple, Dad.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
Greta swirls the wine in her glass, aware that they have an audience of four, each of whom is looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Life sometimes gets in the way.”
“That’s because your life isn’t conducive to relationships.” He picks up his menu and addresses the list of entrées. “They don’t just happen. You have to make room for them.”
She grits her teeth. “I like my life the way it is.”
“As you should,” Davis says from across the table, and when everyone turns to him, he shrugs. “Well, it’s true. Her life is objectively pretty awesome.”
In his twenties, Davis had played piano in a jazz trio, and he has a million stories about the old days in Chicago, late nights full of whisky and music with friends. She knows he loves his life now—he has a wife he adores and three grown kids who happen to be fantastic, and until a few weeks ago, when he officially retired, he was the neighborhood’s favorite postman—but there’s always a certain look he gets when they talk about Greta’s career, something just south of envy and just north of wistful.
When the waiter arrives, they place their orders and hand over their menus, and Greta thinks it’s over. But then Conrad, who has mostly been staring into his scotch glass, turns back to her.
“You know I only want what’s best for you, right?” he asks, and he looks so old right then, so unhappy, that Greta almost says, Right. But she finds she can’t.
“No. You want my life to look like Asher’s.”
“I want you to be happy.”
“You want me to be settled,” she says. “That’s not the same thing.”
Mary pulls back her chair and sets her napkin on the table. “You know what? I think we’re gonna take a spin around the dance floor.”
“Before dinner?” Davis asks with a frown.
“Yes,” she says firmly, and the Blooms both stand up as well.
“Us too,” Eleanor says, grabbing Todd’s hand. “Time to cut a rug.”
“It’s a waltz,” he says, but he follows her out to the dance floor anyway, leaving Greta and Conrad behind.
For a second, they just look at each other, and then at the now-empty table—the napkins strewn across bread plates, the lipstick-stained wine glasses—and Greta almost laughs. Instead, she clears her throat and says, “Look, I know you want me to be more like Asher, but—”