The do over, p.4
The Do-Over, page 4
“Well, the truth is . . . ,” I began. But before I could squeak out another word, my attempt at a confession that would have humiliated me, regardless of my innocence, got caught up in the Taylor tornado. It was as familiar to me as an approaching nor’easter to a ragged old fisherman who had spent his life pursuing an elusive catch on the sea. She came bounding down the stairs with the same recognizable cadence she’d had practically since she began walking. Taylor didn’t walk so much as she bounced and glided in equal measure.
“Mom? Did I hear you call my name a few minutes ago? I was on the phone with—” Her face morphed before my eyes into a mushy mess of emotion. In an instant mascara was streaming down her face, and her cheeks had turned the color of cotton candy. The pink kind. Not the blue. “I told them you’d come!”
I don’t know exactly how I got to my feet. My dad may have pushed me up. Or maybe Taylor’s magnetic energy pulled me in like that Wooly Willy toy we’d played with as kids. The thing where you move the iron shavings around with a magnet to form Willy’s hair and beard. Here, kids. Some little pieces of metal to play with! Is it any wonder I became an attorney? Even as a child I recognized the liability risks. Regardless, I was on my feet and being cried on before you could say “settle out of court.”
“Hey, Tay.” I hugged her back. She was annoying, but I loved the brat. I think I’d even missed her—not that I’d realized it before right then. “What’s wrong?”
“‘What’s wrong?’” she repeated. “How could anything be wrong?” She pulled away until her face was about six inches from mine and whispered, “This is the happiest day of my life.”
She was a little too in my space. Even as representative of another one-third of the six X chromosomes Scott and Annie Keaton had put out into the world, she and I didn’t know each other well enough for her to be standing so close.
“Well,” I muttered as I attempted to pull away. “That can’t possibly be true.”
“No, it is true! Mom said you couldn’t come, and I thought she was being ridiculous. But then Jackson started telling me I needed to prepare myself in case you actually couldn’t come. And he was telling me I needed to be more understanding because you have an important job and everything. But I still knew you were coming. Then when Erica said you really, really weren’t coming, I figured it had to be true. If anyone would know if you were coming, it would be Erica. But even she didn’t—” Her eyes widened, and a grin as broad as sunrise overtook her face. “That little punk! Erica!” She yelled toward the back door and took off running. “I can’t believe you tricked me!”
I felt dizzy, and not just in a commotion-all-around-me way. I felt sort of like that cow that Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton watched fly through the air in Twister.
My dad’s arms, suddenly wrapped back around me, provided stabilization. “You’re a good kid, McKenna. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for you to get away, with all you’ve got going on. But thanks for being here for her.”
Thanks for being here for her? Surely not even the Twister cow was as confused as I was.
“Oh, sweetie,” my mom chimed in with a sigh as she stood from the bench and placed her hand on my arm. “Why didn’t you tell us the panic attacks had started again?”
“They haven’t, Mom. Really.”
“I’m sorry that taking time off work is creating so much stress for you.” I stared blankly at her, and she continued. “I mean, that is what’s causing the stress, right? Or is there something else—”
“Nope,” I asserted. “There’s nothing else.” Whatever vulnerability I’d been feeling had to be halfway to Oz by now.
My dad kissed the top of my head before he pulled away. He grabbed my suitcases from the front stoop and brought them into the foyer. “If you need to talk, you know we’re always—”
“Aunt McKenna!”
Just in time to distract from a conversation I didn’t have the energy for, three voices and six feet came running at me with a herd-of-buffalo quality I knew would have resulted in a “No running in the house!” back in my day. Erica’s too. Maybe the way our parents had spoiled Taylor prepared them for grandparenthood.
“Hey, guys!” I called out as I planted my feet and prepared to be tackled. Ten-year-old April and seven-year-old Cooper were nearly as tall as I was, and at four years old, Charlie looked on track to outgrow us all. I wrapped my arms around them as they reached me. “I’ve missed you!”
“We’ve missed you too,” April said, tilting her head up slightly to look at me. “Are you here for Aunt Taylor’s party?”
Oh, of course.
Well, that was fortuitous. Erica said no one would even question my being there. I hadn’t been too sure about that, so I’d crafted stories of use-it-or-lose-it paid time off and situations in which my bosses had said things to me like, “You work so hard! You need to get away for a while and recharge.” My little sister’s engagement party would work in a pinch, I supposed.
“I sure am,” I replied.
“Alright, that’s enough.” Erica’s voice presided over the chaos like the superteacher and supermom that she was as she entered from the back of the house. “Let’s at least let Aunt McKenna get her coat off.”
The kids scattered, my dad started carrying luggage upstairs, and my mom disappeared after mumbling something about her Instant Pot.
“Hi,” I whispered to Erica as she walked toward me. “I’m really happy to see you.” I grabbed her hand as soon as I could reach her and wrapped puffy coat-ensconced arms around her shoulders.
She clung to my waist. “It’s been too long, McKenna.”
“Not you too. It hasn’t been that long—”
“It’s been three years.”
Had it?
“Oh. Well, that is too long, I guess. But I don’t need you to make me feel guilty—”
“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty.” She leaned her head back and looked at me. And it was okay that she was in my space. “I just missed you. That’s all.”
“I missed you too.” I sighed and pulled away and finally began stripping off my coat.
Erica took it from me. The moment it was in her hands she said, “You’re drenched.”
I shrugged and attempted to appear as nonchalant as I could. “It was a lot colder in New York—”
“McKenna . . .” She was surveying me with concern, but there was warning in her voice—as if I’d better not dare to be anything less than completely truthful with her.
Being human is not a weakness, McKenna. I exhaled as I remembered the words Dr. Krabbe, my first therapist, had said to me at the age of eleven.
“Everything got chaotic a few minutes ago and I’m tired. Plus, I was thinking about everything going on . . . and I had a minor panic attack. First one in years.” Erica studied me and refused to flinch until I raised my hands in front of me and added, “I promise.”
She pulled my sweaty body to her and embraced me firmly. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I know.” I rested my head on her shoulder for a moment and then pulled away after a quick squeeze. “So remind me . . . When’s this engagement party?”
She flung my coat over her shoulder. “Next weekend.”
I nodded and picked up my carry-on. Okay. Next weekend. With any luck, Wallis, Monroe and Burkhead’s investigation would unearth the egregious error well before then, and I’d be on a plane by the following Monday.
Chapter 3
That’s not at all what happened!” I exploded with laughter. Everyone else at the table had already lost it through the course of Erica’s journey down memory lane.
Her jaw dropped, and she stared at me in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? That’s exactly what happened!”
I shook my head with vehemence, but the grin didn’t shake loose. Though I had no precise recollection of the memory she was sharing with our family, I couldn’t deny it sounded like something I would do.
“You’re a nut job,” I insisted nonetheless, finding too much fun in the teasing.
“Mom, Dad, back me up on this,” Erica pleaded. Of course, my parents were useless—my dad because he was laughing too hard, my mom because she was busy serving up French silk pie for dessert. “She walked in from school one day and asked us all to gather around a flip-chart presentation that she had made, and she spent the next hour laying out the course of her life.”
Taylor was laughing hardest of all. “At seven?”
Erica nodded. “Yep. And I’m not just talking ‘I want to be a lawyer’ and ‘I’m going to marry George Glass.’”
I nearly spit out my coffee at the mention of George Glass.
“Ooh! Who’s George Glass?” Taylor asked. “I’ve never heard about any of the guys Kenna dated!”
I looked at Erica and rolled my eyes. A perfectly executed spit take on my part had been wasted on the young.
“George Glass was Jan Brady’s imaginary boyfriend from The Brady Bunch,” Jared interjected, probably in an attempt to keep his wife and senior sister-in-law from choking his junior sister-in-law, who had just made the other two feel approximately one hundred and twelve years old.
“It was the cutest thing!” Erica continued. “She drew a timeline, starting with the summer-school programs she wanted to enroll in for extra credit, that went all the way up through passing the bar and becoming senior partner in a law firm.”
The proud and amused grin fell from Erica’s face as our eyes met. Tears pooled in hers as mine began to sting, and I knew that we were sharing the same depressing brain wave. She’d just accidentally presented a long-forgotten memory as evidential proof that I really was in the midst of losing everything I had worked toward my entire life.
I saw Jared’s hand slip to his wife’s knee. He offered a compassionate smile in my direction and then replaced the gravity on his face with a carefree, good-natured smile.
“Hey, now,” he began. “Just because George Glass wasn’t involved doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about some of the real, non-imaginary boyfriends McKenna had. Because we definitely should.”
Erica looked at him like he was her knight in shining armor. I, meanwhile, pointed across the table from my eyes to his in the international symbol for “I’m watching you, Pierson,” which caused his smile to widen. I was grateful that he had stepped in, and he knew it.
I loved Jared. I’d always loved Jared.
We were heading into a discussion that, I suspected, was about to draw attention to the fact that I had never been boy crazy. But Erica had been. She had been one of the most popular girls in school, all throughout our childhood, and she’d always had her pick of any boy she wanted to date. Football captains, basketball stars, student-council presidents . . . They’d all gone out with Erica. So when she’d taken a liking to Jared Pierson her sophomore year at Duke, even though Jared was a high-school senior, like me, I hadn’t understood what was happening. He had actually been my friend first, and she’d interacted with him through the years at various school events. He’deven been over to our house a few times when he and I were part of the same study group. Things like that. He was great.
He just wasn’t the type of great that Erica had ever found to be great.
There had been three of us battling it out for valedictorian throughout most of high school. Jared, me, and Henry Blumenthal. Henry moved to Oregon just after Christmas senior year, leaving Pierson and me to duke it out. I’d ultimately triumphed, but I’d always suspected he had slacked off in AP European History and accepted a plain old A instead of an A-plus because he was too shy to give a speech at graduation. He’d heartily congratulated me on my victory, fulfilled his role as salutatorian like a champ, and then gotten over his timidity enough to ask out my big sister before graduation night was through. Apart from a few months after she graduated from college, in which Jared had tried to convince her she could do better than him, they’d been together ever since. Although I wasn’t too sure he had ever gotten over his belief she could do better—even after fourteen years of marriage and three kids. He still looked at her like he thought he might wake up from his dream one of these days.
“Now we’re talking!” Taylor exclaimed. She leaned over to Jackson and said, “I missed out on all the good stuff.”
I shook my head. “No, you didn’t.” I smiled up at my mom, who had just placed pie in front of me. “There is no good stuff. At least not for me. Now, Erica, on the other hand . . .”
Erica wrapped her arms around Jared. “Erica didn’t get to the good stuff until this one came along.”
I grimaced at her, and she winked, properly interpreting my disgust at her schmaltz and not backing down for a moment.
“I just don’t remember you ever having any boyfriends, Kenna,” Taylor said. Her fork hovered in the air as she stared into space. After a long while she shrugged and sighed. “Nope. Nothing.”
“I was too focused on my studies.” I directed a sickly sweet and innocent grin at my dad.
“That’s my girl.”
“Oh, whatever!” I think it was Erica who said that. It was difficult to tell over my brother-in-law’s riotous laughter.
I feigned shock. “What? Do you question my laborious dedication to my studies?”
My mother jumped to my defense. “No one ever could.”
Erica swallowed down a piece of pie. “That’s right. No one ever could. And that laborious dedication kept you from going on dates with your boyfriends, but it didn’t keep you from having them.”
Jackson laughed. “What does that mean?”
I couldn’t help but look at him in surprise. He did have a voice! Well, that wasn’t fair. He had greeted me very nicely when we were introduced before dinner. But ever since the entire family had been seated at the dining-room table—with my niece and nephews eating at the small table in the kitchen—I hadn’t heard him utter a word. Taylor hadn’t given him a chance. Or maybe he liked it that way.
I took a deep breath. “Well, I always liked the idea of having a boyfriend. Mainly so I didn’t have to suffer through the whole upheaval of having to find a date for prom or wonder if anyone was going to ask me to dance at homecoming. It was easier to find a boyfriend during the social-calendar off-season, before everyone got desperate.”
My family laughed at me as I explained my high-school dating philosophy. I was neither offended nor surprised by their chortling. I was used to it. They had always loved me and accepted me. But understanding me? That was another matter entirely.
“You can laugh,” I told them, still feeling good-natured about it all. “But that was the only way I could have pulled off the grades I did and still make it to all of the school events. It worked pretty well, thank you very much!”
Jared scoffed. “It worked for you! Meanwhile, you had these poor guys committed to you for months at a time and then being dragged along just to be your escort.”
My hand flitted through the air, brushing off his concern for the “poor guys.” It wasn’t that I hadn’t cared about the feelings of any of the boys I dated. Even without a strong outpouring of romantic inklings or much appreciation for the so-called joys of being in a relationship, I had never been the type to play with boys’ emotions. I had carefully chosen each and every boyfriend. They had been second- or third-tier friends, mostly. People I could stand being around and who didn’t seem to hate spending time with me, but they had to be low maintenance. That meant they had to have something else that kept them busy—be it sports or a job or video games or whatever—so that I had time to study. They had to like being around me but not want me around all the time. And they had to be guys whom other girls didn’t seem to be fighting over, since I never would have been so cruel as to keep them from more affectionately predisposed girlfriends.
I was able to brush off Jared’s concern for the “poor guys” because they had always known what they were signing up for. I hadn’t misled a single one of them. A couple of them may have liked me as something more than a friend, but I’d told them honestly from the beginning that I was too busy to fall in love with them. Most of them were just glad to have a girl to hang out with at pep rallies or the occasional dance.
The skeptical look on Jared’s face seemed to indicate he wasn’t completely convinced.
“What?” I asked him with a mouthful of pie.
“You were the biggest heartbreaker in the whole senior class!” he exclaimed, his wide eyes staring at me from across the table.
In response to his impassioned declaration, Taylor maneuvered up onto her knees on the dining room chair and looked as if she might just bounce away into the air, unable to control her giddy excitement.
“McKenna Keaton was the biggest heartbreaker of the senior class?” she questioned in surprise and euphoria. “You have to tell me everything. I’m serious, Jared. Everything!”
My dad spoke up for the first time in a while. “Well, now, I’m not sure we need to hear everything.”
I chuckled. “Don’t worry, Dad. There’s nothing to hear.” I turned to Taylor next to me and repeated, “There’s nothing to hear.” And then my attention was back on Jared. “Seriously. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was never a heartbreaker. None of those guys ever cared. We were friends who went out. That was all.”
“Your version is boring,” Taylor said to me, and the entire table dissolved into hilarity. Myself included. “Jared, tell us your version.”
“So many guys were in love with her,” he indulged, leaning across the table and pointing his fork at Taylor once he was able to maintain his straight face again. “And each one of them thought they were going to be the one to tame her.”
“‘Tame’ me!” I chortled. “What sort of Shakespearean trope were you living in high school, Pierson?”
“It’s true! Guys who went out with you were the living personifications of all sorts of cliches, actually. A little bit Shakespeare, a little bit John Hughes . . .” He had Taylor’s rapt attention and was playing it up for full effect.
“I had no idea,” Taylor breathed. I was suddenly sitting next to the heart-eyes emoji. “Tell me everything.”
