you didn’t notice me. But I noticed you. Everybody did. You were…” I shook my head. “You were everything I wanted to be. You were the best possible kind of teacher I could imagine. And when I heard that you were coming here to be the principal of Kempner, I thought you’d be the best thing that could happen to us in the wake of losing Max—and that’s saying a lot. But … what happened to you? Where are your flamingo pants? Where is your popcorn tie? The Duncan Carpenter I knew wouldn’t be canceling field trips! He’d be planning new ones.” Suddenly, the anger kind of melted away, and my voice got a little shaky. “I remember who you used to be. I was so excited to see that guy again. But it’s like he’s gone. I don’t know where he is. And I don’t have any idea at all who you are. But I’d give anything to see that guy again.”
Duncan kept himself still the whole time I was talking—not moving, his expression totally stoic.
I don’t know what I was hoping for. Some kind of explanation, maybe, like My boring wife told me it was time to grow up and stop goofing around. Or maybe, I thought principals had to be hard-asses. Are you saying this place would prefer a sweet-hearted goofball?
I guess in some fantasy version of this moment, I’d be able to show him the error of his ways. I’d be able to give him permission to be who he truly was. It’s that fantasy we all harbor when somebody else is completely wrong, and we hope that if we explain it to them, they’ll hear us, and go, “Oh, God. You’re right. I’m the worst. Thank you for helping me be a better person.”
Like that’s ever worked.
Anyway: it didn’t.
In response to all that—my confession that I knew him, my admission of how much I’d admired him, my accidental, utterly vulnerable, grand finale confession of how much I truly longed to see the former Duncan again—Duncan went with, “We’re getting off topic, here.”
But no. We were just—finally—getting on topic.
I didn’t back down. “I remember you,” I said, taking a step closer, peering into his face.
Duncan looked out at the Gulf.
“What happened?” I said. “What made you like this? Why did you change?” And then, thinking maybe I was asking the question that would hit the bull’s-eye and cause him to admit the truth at last, I said, quieter, in almost a whisper. “Was it your wife?”
Duncan frowned and looked at me. “My wife?”
“She doesn’t approve of goofing around, does she? She wants you to be serious all the time. She wants you to be like all the other adults.” I shook my head. “She never had a sense of humor. Why do guys always, always go for the pretty girls—no matter how boring they are?”
But Duncan was staring at me.
Oh, God. I’d insulted him. You can’t go around calling people’s wives boring! I tried to backtrack. “Not your wife, of course—I mean—she’s pretty and also … not … boring.” I was so blatantly lying.
But that’s when Duncan said, “Who?”
“Your wife. I’m sorry. I’m sure she has many, many great qualities.”
But he was frowning. “I don’t have a wife.”
I froze. “Of course you do.” And then, as if I were trying to remind him of something he should already know, I went on, “That lady from admissions? From Andrews?”
“Chelsey?”
“That’s it,” I said. “The one who asked you out in the parking lot.”
“Wow,” Duncan said. “Okay. We dated, but…”
That didn’t compute. “Didn’t you … marry her?”
“Marry her!” he burst out with the closest thing I’d seen to a laugh from him since he’d arrived.
“Didn’t you move in together? Wasn’t it really … serious?”
He shook his head slowly, like he couldn’t imagine why I was asking that. “No.”
“There was a rumor,” I said, now all accusatory, “that you were thinking about getting engaged.”
He looked at me like that was irrelevant. “Still, no.”
“A solid rumor,” I said. “A convincing rumor.”
But Duncan just shook his head.
And despite the fact that we were fighting over the field trip, despite the fact that he had just declared the end of all fun forever, and despite the fact I didn’t even like him anymore, my heart, very slowly, just started flapping its wings.
“So … you’re not … married?” I needed to reconfirm. Again.
“No!” he said, like he’d never heard anything so crazy.
“You don’t have, like, a whole gaggle of kids?”
Embarrassing, but true: I could