‘Auden,’ she said, reaching to brush back her hair, taking a breath. ‘I didn’t think you’d be home until later.’
‘I finished up early.’ I slid my keys into my bag. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’ She came inside, shutting the door behind her. ‘Just doing some thinking.’
We stood there for a moment, neither of us saying anything. Upstairs, I could hear Thisbe’s waves, crashing. ‘So… how did it go?’
‘Good.’ She swallowed, biting her lip. ‘We did a lot of talking.’
‘And?’
‘And,’ she said, ‘we agreed that for the time being, it’s better if we keep things as they are.’
‘With him at the Condor,’ I said, clarifying. She nodded. ‘So he didn’t want to come back.’
She walked over to me, putting her hands on my shoulders. ‘Your father… he thinks he’d be a hindrance more than a help right now. That maybe, until the Beach Bash and summer is over, it’s better if I just focus on me and Thisbe.’
‘How could that be better?’ I asked. ‘You’re his family.’
She bit her lip again, then looked down at her hands. ‘I know it doesn’t sound like it makes sense.’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘But I understand what he’s saying,’ she continued. ‘Your father and I… we had a whirlwind courtship and marriage, and I got pregnant so fast. We just need to slow down a bit.’
I put my purse down on the table. ‘So this is a slowing. Not a full stop.’
Heidi nodded. ‘Absolutely.’
To be honest, I wasn’t fully convinced. I knew my dad and how he operated: if things got complicated, he extricated himself, somehow managing to make it seem like it was the most selfless of gestures, instead of just the opposite. He wasn’t abandoning Heidi and Thisbe: he was simplifying their lives. He hadn’t left my mom over professional envy: he’d stepped aside to give her the spotlight she needed. And he certainly hadn’t basically ignored the fact that I was his child all those years: he was just teaching me to be independent and a grown-up in a world in which most people were too infantile. My dad never got back on the bike. He never even let himself crash. One wobble, or even the hint of one, and he pulled over to the side, abandoning the ride altogether.
‘So,’ Heidi said, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table, ‘enough about me. What’s going on with you?’
I slid in opposite her, folding my hands on top of my bag. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it looks like I have a date to the prom.’
‘Really?’ She clapped her hands. ‘That’s great!’
‘Yeah. Jason just asked me.’
She blinked. ‘Jason…’
‘My friend from home,’ I said. She still looked quizzical, so I picked up my phone, flashing it at her. ‘The texter.’
‘Oh! The one who stood you up!’
I nodded.
‘Well. That’s very…’
‘Lame?’ I said.
‘I was going to say full circle, actually, or something to that effect,’ she said slowly. ‘What, you don’t want to go?’
‘No, I do.’ I looked down at my hands again. ‘I mean, it’s a second chance. I think I’d be stupid not to take it.’
‘True.’ She sat back, running a hand through her hair. ‘They don’t come around that often.’
I nodded, thinking of Jason at the Last Chance, how he’d been waiting for me in a booth and smiled broadly when I came in the door. Over burgers and onion rings, he’d gone on and on about the leadership conference, and how great it was going, and listening to him felt so familiar, but not in a bad way. It was like reversing, going back to the spring when we’d shared lunches and talked about school and classes. And when he cleared his throat and said he had something to ask me, that was familiar, too, and I’d agreed easily. It was just that simple.
Now, I looked at Heidi, who was staring out the window over the sink, and remembered how I’d once seen her based on her effervescent e-mails and girly clothes, all flash, no substance. I’d thought I knew so much when I’d arrived here, the smartest girl in the room. But I’d been wrong.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘can I ask you something?’
She looked over at me. ‘Of course.’
‘A few weeks back,’ I began, ‘you said something about how my mom wasn’t a truly cold bitch. How she couldn’t be, because they always end up alone. Do you remember that?’
Heidi furrowed her brow, thinking. ‘Vaguely.’
‘And then you said you knew all about cold bitches, because you used to be one yourself.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘So what’s your question?’
‘I guess…’ I stopped, taking a breath. ‘Were you really, though?’
‘A cold bitch?’ she asked.
I nodded.
‘Oh, yeah. Totally.’
‘I just can’t picture that,’ I said. ‘I mean, you that way.’
Heidi smiled. ‘Well, you didn’t know me before I came here and met your father. I was just out of business school, totally uptight. Ruthless, actually. I was killing myself gaining capital so I could open a boutique in New York. I had a business plan, and all these investor contacts, a loan, the whole deal. Nothing else mattered.’
‘I never knew you lived in New York.’
‘It was my plan, after I graduated,’ she said. ‘But then my mom got sick, and I had to come home here to Colby for the summer to take care of her. I’d known Isabel and Morgan since high school, so I got a job with them waiting tables, just to make some extra cash for my move.’