married? He doesn’t wear a ring . . . ,” someone posted, but everyone else ignored her. No one wanted to think about Everett St. James being married. Part of the fantasy was that he was always available.
While Teddy wasn’t a mother, she understood what these message board posters were talking about. She’d found Everett’s show years ago when babysitting her niece and had been so distracted by Everett himself that when she finally tore herself away from the screen, she realized that Emma had drawn a picture on the wall, dumped grape juice on the couch, and given the patient family dog a lopsided haircut.
Ever since that day, she’d been watching Everett’s show on her own. No one else knew about her habit. It was just her and a message board’s worth of sexually and emotionally frustrated moms who needed to project all of their desires onto a broad-shouldered, floppy-haired, sensitive puppeteer.
It was now three days after she had officially left Richard’s place (well, after he had officially kicked her out of their place) and Teddy was watching the latest episode on her laptop at work when the bell above the door rang. She quickly slammed her laptop shut as a small girl walked into the shop and gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
From her station behind the counter, Teddy watched the girl in the bright red coat. She trailed her fingers along cabinets, picking up some toys before putting them back disinterestedly. Others she stared at longer, examining them and pulling out an honest-to-God camera, not a phone, to snap a picture.
Weekday mornings were typically a quiet time—even a customer-free time—at Colossal Toys, with most people at work or in school. Why Josie opened the shop so early, Teddy didn’t understand. But the girl’s presence was especially odd because of her age. Colossal Toys was a vintage toy shop, full of action figures from the eighties and nineties—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and My Little Ponies and Transformers—the shelves so overstuffed that they threatened to topple at any moment. Teddy herself, at nearly thirty years old, hadn’t been alive when many of the toys were in their heyday. Any children in the store were usually dragged there by pop-culture-obsessed parents eager to show off original Alien action figures to their uninterested offspring.
As if she could feel Teddy’s eyes on her, the girl whipped around and leveled a stare at her. “I’m not stealing anything.”
Teddy stood up straight and reflexively moved to smooth out the layers of her long brown hair, then remembered that she’d asked a hairstylist yesterday to give her a bob. And so, with a few quick chops, the feature that Richard had complimented most (usually when he was deriding how “unfeminine” he found short hair) was gone.
Teddy pivoted and tucked the edges of her bob behind her ears, chastened by sustained eye contact from a girl whose age was most likely barely in the double digits. “I didn’t think you were.”
The girl lifted her eyebrows as if waiting for Teddy to state her true intentions, and Teddy found herself unable to say anything. I’m the adult here, Teddy told herself. Get it together. This is a child.
“Isn’t today a school day?” she finally asked.
“My parents don’t believe in traditional schooling. I’m allowed to roam the city unsupervised during school hours.”
Teddy blinked.
“I’m kidding,” the girl said, a small smile breaking through her otherwise serious face. “It’s a teacher in-service day.”
“Oh,” Teddy said, relieved. “I forgot all about those.”
“Anyway,” the girl said breezily, “feel free to go back to your job. I don’t need to be entertained.”
Teddy cocked her head to the side, studying the girl. “Do you even know what any of these toys are?”
The girl nodded. “Some of them. My parents are old and I’m an only child. Well, not really. I have a brother, but he’s eighteen years older than me, so he’s more of a very involved uncle than a brother. My parents distrust most aspects of current popular culture, so I’m more familiar with”—she gestured around the store—“this than most of my classmates.”
She walked across the store, which took her only a few steps, as it was very small and packed full of toys. “I’m Gretel, by the way.”
Teddy held out a hand. “I’m Teddy. What a lovely name.”
Gretel rolled her eyes. “As in ‘Hansel and.’ My parents again. My mom’s a literature professor with a concentration in folktales. Where does your name originate? The bear?”
Teddy stifled a smile. “It’s short for Theodora.