searched her face for a moment, hunting for traces of insincerity and finding none. She meant it, he realized slowly. She was serious. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with how he’d acted—or, if she did, she was willing to let him get away with it. She didn’t expect anything else. It used to be he’d liked that about her—her willingness to meet him where he was at any given moment. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure he did. “I’m sorry anyway,” he said firmly. “I should have done a better job with you.”
“Maybe one day you will,” Jo said lightly, getting to her feet and brushing the seat of her skirt off. “In the meantime, Colby, you take care of yourself.”
Colby lifted his hand to say goodbye to her, sitting on the curb as her figure receded and waiting for the inevitable pang of regret. He was surprised to find it never came—and that instead he found himself thinking of Meg’s voice on the phone late at night, the way she drove him nuts and made him laugh and talked about the world like it was some old jewelry box she’d found at a curiosity shop, full of treasures just waiting for someone to blow the layer of dust off. He thought of what he’d said to Doug this morning: I was scared that the job would turn out to be a letdown, or, like, that I would be a letdown . . . or just that, like, the rug would get pulled out.
He dug his phone out of his pocket and gazed down at it for a moment. It felt heavy as a stone in his hand.
Thirty-Six
Meg
Meg borrowed a dress of her mom’s for graduation, a silky pale peach situation with a cinched waist that she remembered from when Hal used to play gigs at fancy historic theaters. “You look beautiful,” her mom said when she came down into the living room. “Actually, I take that back; you look fierce. Honestly, sweetheart, I am so, so proud of you.”
“I’m proud of you, too,” Meg said, and it was true. Her mom had gone from the hospital into a ten-day inpatient program in south Jersey; since she’d gotten back she’d been going to meetings every evening in the community room of a synagogue not far from their house. Two days ago, Meg had come home from school to find her standing at the kitchen island with a tube of cookie dough and a spoon. “It’s my turn to bring snacks,” she’d explained, looking a little sheepish.
“You want help?” Meg had asked, setting her backpack in the breakfast nook. She couldn’t remember her mom baking anything since she was a little kid.
Her mom had nodded. “I should have just bought something,” she’d said, digging an ancient cookie sheet out of a cupboard. “But I want them to like me. Is that pathetic?”
“I think it’s human,” Meg had said, and her mom had smiled in a way that made her look like a teenager, flicking the kitchen television to HGTV. In the end they’d eaten most of the cookie dough before they got it into the oven and had to run out to the store for another tube.
“Dad and Lisa are going to meet us at school so I can give them their tickets,” Meg said now, tucking the envelope into the outside pocket of her tote bag. “You guys don’t have to sit together, obviously, I just—” She broke off.
“It’s fine,” her mom said, squinting at the antique mirror hanging in the foyer and slicking on a coat of plummy lipstick. She looked different since she’d stopped drinking, Meg thought, even though it hadn’t been that long yet: her eyes were clear, and her face was less swollen. She’d started shuffling around the block in her walking cast every morning before she went to work, listening to the true-crime podcasts Meg had shown her how to download onto her phone. “I’ll behave, I promise.”
Meg grimaced. “No, I know you’ll behave. I’m not saying—”
“Meggie, sweetheart,” her mom said, turning away from the mirror before laying two gentle hands on Meg’s shoulders and squeezing. “I’m teasing. Today is about you, okay? You’ve done so much—at school, yeah, but also around here. Try to enjoy it.”
Meg nodded. She’d stayed at her dad and Lisa’s while her mom was away, helping Lisa cook plant-based dinners from some mail-order meal kit and running errands with her dad on the weekend. It had reminded Meg