a lifeline, or like the person who had wronged MaryAnne—her teenage self and maybe her adult self too—who deserved that grudge in the first place.
It was the least she could do, Cleo realized, to accept her friend’s grace with the same amount of generosity. And so she did.
It was easier to do than she ever would have thought.
Matty had found Doug Smith.
He was pretty surprised himself, he told Cleo once Gaby had left her office and Cleo had shut her door. She had meant it—that this was personal, that Lucas deserved to know his story before anyone else, even before her best friend, and she intended to honor that.
Matty sounded like he was on his bike again.
“Have you turned into a cycling enthusiast?” Cleo asked. She never envisioned Matty, who had managed to be both skinny and doughy in high school, ending up as a jock.
“What? No, I just commute to work this way,” he said. “I’ve really gone full-blown Seattle, I guess.” He took a breath. “Anyway, so there’s a reason you couldn’t track him down on Google.”
“Because there are fourteen thousand Doug Smiths in the United States?”
“Well, that,” Matty said. “But also, he’s a computer privacy expert. He’s the one Doug Smith who would never show up on Google even if you wanted him to.”
“Well, fuck,” Cleo said.
“Nah.” Matty laughed. “Not fuck. You have me, and it turns out not only did I find him, I have his place of business.”
“You do?” Cleo had never really loved Matty enough in high school, but she was finding that she was a little bit in love with him now.
“It’s a pretty small world,” he said. “He’s here. In Seattle. He works on our campus—Microsoft, I mean. A different division, I mean, of course, because I’m not cool enough to be black ops. I just do the programming, but—”
“Hey, Matty, stop being so self-deprecating. You’re a hero.”
He laughed into his headpiece. “No one ever calls my department ‘heroes,’ so thank you. Anyway, it all checks out. That’s him. Doug Smith. In Seattle.” He paused, and it sounded like he was slowing down, and Cleo pictured him pulling in to work. She didn’t want to take up more of his time. “So now what?” he asked.
Cleo stared out her window of the Russell Senate Office Building at the dogwoods in full bloom. She thought about her regrets and how they shadowed not just her life but Lucas’s now as well. She thought about what parents pass on to their children: their burdens, their traumas, their complications. She knew her dad wouldn’t want her to be weighed down with his own stuff forever. She knew also that the gift she could pass along to Lucas was lightening her own load too.
“Now, I guess,” she said to Matty, “I’m coming home.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Cleo and Georgie texted all week about how best to approach Doug. Cleo wanted to call him before their trip, but Georgie felt that Lucas should have the chance to introduce himself without her baggage. That this was her mess, but it was his future, and she shouldn’t fuck it up any more than she already had.
Finally, they asked Lucas. Georgie was on FaceTime, and the twins waved on their way to soccer practice, and Georgie ran out of frame for a second to hand them organic protein bars before they left. It was funny, Cleo thought, how food really was a symbol for a nourished soul. She herself had eaten eggs every morning that week for breakfast, and it was a start.
“OK, I’m back, sorry,” Georgie said. She was out on her deck in the Los Angeles sunshine, and Cleo had a flash of a whole different life she could have had. If she and Georgie had found a way to be closer through her childhood, been in better touch once they were grown. Maybe she would have been an entertainment lawyer and lived around the corner and dated broody celebrities and Lucas would be best friends with his cousins. Cleo loved her life, was proud of her choices, but now that she had opened new doors, she did from time to time catch herself envisioning what would have happened if she walked through them.
“So, Lucas, you break the standoff,” Cleo said. “Do you want me to call Doug, um, your dad, and ask if we should come? Or . . . do you want to go out there and meet him and just see what happens?”