EMILY
I swear to god I’ll be graduating college and Mom will be on a call. I watched her nervously through the window at first, but it was clearly the office; she looked base-level stressed and didn’t throw any accusing glances my way. She’d missed pretty much everything I did in elementary school because of work, and although I totally support her, girl power and all that, it’s irritating. She complains about her work all the time, too, so I can’t help noticing I’m coming second to something she doesn’t even like. She came back into the restaurant when we were all done, and it was just as well I’d saved half my sandwich for her. Sometimes she forgets to eat, she’s so busy saving the world with the power of the law, or whatever it is she’s doing when she’s walking back and forth talking on the phone. When she took the sandwich I noticed she’d started picking at the skin on her fingers again, a nervous habit I thought she’d gotten over. Adults are so messed up.
After lunch we all took the Metro to Foggy Bottom to visit George Washington University. For some reason my mother finds the name Foggy Bottom hilarious, and I had to use my Bitchy Voice to get her to stop making stupid jokes. She’s such a child.
This time the kid showing us around was nicer, and for a moment I tried to imagine myself playing Frisbee under the cherry blossoms. It didn’t work, and suddenly Alice appeared, like a lion creeping up on a limping antelope or whatever.
“This is boring,” she said. “Are you even interested in GWU?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if college is what I want to do.”
Alice was surprised. “Why not? It’s four years where your parents pay for you to sleep in and party. Who wouldn’t want to do that?”
I looked at her and raised my eyebrows. “Well, I think the schools actually want you to work as well, Alice.”
Her expression changed. “Oh . . . don’t you have good grades? I hear community college is a good alternative.” She tried on a tone of supportive enthusiasm, which suited her about as well as a party hat suits a rhinoceros.
Nice try, but I shook my head. “My grades are fine. I don’t like school.”
“No one likes school, Emily.” Alice checked her phone absently. It was almost like blinking. “Besides, my mom says college is way more fun.”
“I thought she didn’t go to college.”
“She didn’t, but I’ve never dated a movie star and I still know it would be fun.”
I decided not to waste any more mental energy on Alice’s Guide to College. She’s an idiot.
Alice asked, “Where did your mom sneak off to earlier? Secret boyfriend?”
I gazed at her. “Yeah, she got a match on Tinder.”
Alice giggled. “Can you imagine?”
I shook my head. “No. She had a work call.”
“Oh,” said Alice, losing interest.
The guy leading the tour had stopped to point out the engineering building, and we all concertina’d together again. Engineering buildings all look the same, what’s up with that?
Alice yawned hugely and stared around. She lowered her voice. “Did you hear about Becca and Lucy and that other girl? They got suspended.”
“No,” I lie, “what for?”
Alice shrugged. “Who cares? Bad grades, probably, they’re all dumb as bricks.” She looks over the group of kids. “I think I’m going to try and hook up with the blue-collar guy.”
I frowned. “Will? How do you know he’s blue collar?”
“You knew who I meant, didn’t you? He needs to work through college, doesn’t he? His parents may not have even graduated high school for all we know. I’ve never slept with someone in a different social class, it might be fun.” She fake shivered. “A little rough around the edges, if you know what I mean.”
I shook my head. “You’re an asshole, Alice.”
Alice grinned and nodded. “I know, I’m a terrible person.” Will happened to turn around at that moment and caught us both looking at him. He raised his eyebrows at us and then, when Alice smiled flirtatiously, smiled back. Then Alice did that stupid thing where she looks at the ground and bites her lip, which I guess she thinks is totally hot, so she missed the moment when Will looked at me and briefly rolled his eyes. I laughed but managed to turn it into a cough.
Alice said, “Do you want to bet I can bag him before the end of the week?”
I said, “How on earth, your mom is here, his dad is here, it’s not like we’re going to get a lot of free time.”
Alice snorted. “Are you joking? Did you actually read the itinerary?”
“Uh, no. I leave all that stuff to my mom.” This was a fairly embarrassing admission, and Alice pounced on it.
“How grown up of you,” she said sarcastically. “There are several periods where we can all hang out, only the kids. Side trips, visits to the mall, whatever. It’s totally doable.”
“Well, I’m not betting on it. I don’t care what you do.”
Alice said, “Really? I saw you looking at him, too. Maybe we should both try and see who wins.”
I felt myself blushing but said no pretty firmly. “He’s a person, Alice, not a prize. Did you miss all those lectures about consent?”
Alice snorted. “Oh please. You’re saying guys hate being offered sex with no strings attached?”
“You’d sleep with him to win a bet?”
“No, I’d sleep with him because this trip is a total bore and I need something to occupy my time. I don’t even know why I’m here. I’m going to USC. My dad went there, he’s on the board, and the admissions director has been to our house and has a boner for my mother. I’m so good.”
I stared at her, wondering how we’d ever been friends.
Then Alice said, “I bet you think me and my whole family are hideous, horrible people, but the thing is, Emily, everyone would do whatever they could to get ahead. I’m just being honest about it.” She shrugged. “If you don’t think your mom would blow the dean of Harvard to get you in, you’re an idiot.”
I wondered if Alice was right. Was everyone else playing the system every way they could? They seemed so nice. Will and another kid were standing nearby, laughing at something on their phones—were they hacking into the school’s mainframe to boost their chances? Were they blackmailing the admissions person? They suddenly both laughed and it seemed unlikely. I’m not naive: The process is a crapshoot; I know that. Colleges get millions of applications from kids with 4.0 GPAs and up every year, and I’ve watched enough college acceptance videos online to know that getting in is as much luck as anything else. We all put a lot of faith in the shibboleths of academic success (not sleeping through Comparative Religion, either; check that vocabulary); we’re like compulsive gamblers who wear their lucky shirt or who only place bets on even days, or brides who wear something blue. We get this grade. Take that AP class. All so our raised hand stands out and we’ll be the one pulled from the ocean. Suddenly I’m completely exhausted and turn up my palms at Alice.
“I don’t think your whole family is hideous, your little sister is really quite sweet.”
Alice laughed. She never takes offense; it’s another aspect of her character I envy. Maybe she’s a sociopath who has no human feelings whatsoever, or maybe she’s so incredibly self-confident that other people’s opinions simply roll off her beautiful plumage.
“Do you know why you and I never became real friends, Emily?” she asked, leaning close enough for me to see the sheen of highlighter on her cheekbones, the dab of lighter shadow at the inner corner of her eye.
I shrugged. The group had moved off again, and in a moment I was going to walk ahead and lose Alice. “I don’t vape? I don’t know the lyrics to rap songs? I get blackheads and dandruff like every other normal teenager?”
“Well, yes, all of those, but the biggest problem is you have no sense of humor. You take yourself so seriously.” Alice giggled. “Who the hell cares about penmanship anymore?”
I was annoyed. “I have a sense of humor, I can be fun.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it.”
Just then the tour finished, and I saw the parents group standing across the street. My mother smiled at me, as she always does when she first sees me. There she is, my heart sang, there’s my mother. Don’t tell her but seeing her makes me feel safe.
I turned to Alice. “You know why you and I never became real friends, Alice?”
Alice shrugged. “I’m too pretty?”
“No, it’s because I do take myself seriously. You think you’re here to party, and I know I’m here for something more interesting. If you want to call that having no sense of humor, then fair enough, I’m cool with it.” I pivoted to walk away. “Good luck with your project, Alice. Have fun.”
I nearly banged into Will, who, it turned out, had left the other kid behind and was apparently about to speak to me. He had his phone in his hand—either the cat video was so good he had to share, or he was offering to let me in on the hacking.
I muttered an apology, praying he hadn’t heard Alice talking about him, and pushed by to make my escape. Always so smooth, Emily.
So, while Emily was pretending all is normal, clearly something had happened across the street. I could tell from the way she paused to let a driver by, waving her hand impatiently, that she was upset.
“How was the tour?” I said, wanting to hear her speak a bit before deciding if I needed to dig deeper.
“It was good,” said Emily. “I liked it better than Georgetown. The lecture halls were very pretty. The dorms were nice. I like the school colors.”
Huh, that was a lot of detail. I examined her covertly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” replied Emily. “I’m tired.”
“Alright,” I said, knowing that wasn’t true. Or maybe it was true, because teenagers are permanently exhausted, but it wasn’t the whole story. I looked across the street and saw the rest of the kids approaching, so I turned and nudged her.
“Let’s go get coffee or something. We don’t have to stay with the group all the time.”
One of the selling points of E3 is that they take care of everything on the tour; you just have to pay a ridiculous sum of money. They offer dozens of different tours, some regional like ours, some hopscotching the country to cover a particular major (best colleges for engineering, etc.). Once you’ve picked a tour and handed over your credit card, they do the rest, booking all the tickets, arranging and paying for meals (except where noted and excluded—always read the small print), hotels, transportation, and such. For those of us with no time to ponder the variables, it seemed like a worthwhile exchange. All we had to do was show up and check “college tour” off our list. But it wasn’t like touring North Korea; you could always leave the group, as long as you made it back in time for the bus.
I walked alongside my daughter, noting the pace of her steps, the set of her shoulders. As a little girl Emily had been shy and reserved, a little bit clingy and interested in staying close. She was the kid sitting on the side twenty minutes after everyone else was in the pool. When I’d expressed concern to her preschool teacher, the teacher laughed and told me to be glad she wasn’t first in the water.
“She’s not scared, she’s watching. She’s evaluating. When all her friends are doing drugs, she’ll be the one who calls the ambulance, don’t worry.” As Emily wasn’t quite four at the time, the thought of her actually being able to use a phone was as surprising a concept as her doing drugs, but I’d clung to this advice tightly, especially during middle school.
I missed her being little. Little-kid problems are so much more easily solved than teenage problems. I’m fully aware I’m not the first parent to notice this. I was working full-time, but in the evenings and weekends I had string cheese and cookies, cartoons and hugs, kisses and stuffed toys. I took Emily to baby gym and then toddler gym and then kinder gym on Saturday mornings; later I drove her to dance lessons and piano lessons. I felt competent and quietly proud that I managed to stay patient most of the time.
I’ll be honest, though, there were days in the office, or in the courtroom, where I forgot I even had a child. Not all day, just periodically. I loved my work. I loved solving problems that were complicated and thorny, that no one else had yet solved. And working hard also meant I was building a wall of protection for us, Emily and me, and if it meant I had less time for Emily, then it was the small price we had to pay until the wall was high enough. Once she was in school and we had Anna, I could convince myself she was fine. But bit by tiny bit the wall I was building ended up between us.
In the last several years any feeling of competence I ever had has completely eroded. I wake up most days unsure of myself, stressed about work and anxious about Emily. She needs help more than ever before but refuses it with every ounce of the self-assurance I’d foolishly encouraged her to develop. I spent over a decade acquiring advanced Emily-decoding skills, like one of those profilers they bring in on TV cop shows, able to look at a crime scene and tell you where the criminal grew up and whether or not he wears hats. But one day, somewhere around Emily’s thirteenth birthday, I’d woken up in enemy territory, having apparently parachuted in overnight, and none of those skills were any use at all.
“Did Alice say something to you?” I asked carefully. Not looking at her, like approaching a skittish horse.
“No,” said Emily. “You know, we barely know each other anymore.”
“You used to be friends.”
Emily shrugged. “Back in ninth grade, for about ten minutes. I don’t think you remember how time behaves in high school, Mom. Something can happen one week and be totally forgotten by the following one. Every six-hour school day has about fourteen hours in it.” She was still looking ahead, walking quickly to put distance between herself and Alice. “It’s a miracle of physics.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I completely knew what she meant. My own life seems to be getting faster every week. However, I do remember my mother grounding me at fourteen, for something predictable like throwing an illicit party, and how the sentence of a month seemed impossibly long. I remember thinking no one at school would recognize me when I got out; they’d stand in the hallways and mutter to each other, Who’s the girl with the unbrushed hair and overgrown fingernails? She looks a little bit like Jessica . . . but didn’t Jessica move away or something? My mother had relented after two weeks, doubtless worn down by the endless whining and stomping about. As every parent of a teenager knows, grounding is a double-edged sword.
“Are you hungry?” I asked Emily.
“No,” my daughter replied firmly. I wasn’t fooled for a second. Emily is never hungry . . . until her blood sugar suddenly drops through the floor and she turns into a total monster.
“Well, I am,” I lied. “Let’s stop here.” We’d reached a reasonable-looking café, and I turned in without waiting for an answer.
The waitress turned out to be the pink-haired girl who’d shown the kids around Georgetown that morning, but she didn’t recognize Emily. She’d probably already had a busy day, what with showing a bunch of idiots around school and then rushing here for her afternoon shift. I’d waited tables in school; it was actually far more instructive for becoming an adult than anything I’d studied at Columbia.
“What can I get you ladies? Start with a drink?” The waitress was shooting for perky but falling slightly short. I felt sorry for her.
“I’ll have coffee and a pastry,” I said. “What do you recommend?”
The waitress looked at me and probably wanted to suggest cutting back on the baked goods, but instead said, “People love the donuts. They’re baked.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll take one of those.”
“Me, too,” said Emily.
“I thought you said you weren’t hungry?” I asked innocently. Why do I do that? Why must I always comment? I knew she was hungry, I’d maneuvered her into eating, why couldn’t I leave it at that? No, I have to make a point.
“I changed my mind.” Emily smiled up at the waitress. “I’ll have an iced coffee, too, please.” She didn’t seem annoyed by my comment, but she dropped her smile once the waitress glanced away. Honestly, I feel like a spy in my own life sometimes, trying to figure out what’s going on using tiny clues, body language, menu choices.
The waitress nodded, looking towards the door as the rest of the tour group came in. Damn, now Emily wasn’t going to tell me anything. Well, at least I got her to eat something. Despite my close call with ruining the moment, I took a second to fist-bump myself for my masterful ninja parenting. In some ways Emily reminds me of bosses I’d had when I was younger, the kind of out-of-date leaders who needed to think an idea was theirs before they could accept it. I’d quickly learned to propose something after lunch when they were at their most genial, to act mildly confused when I made a mistake and hope their avuncular bullshit sexism would kick in. Emily is like that; her interest in something wanes in exact proportion to the interest I express in it. It’s probably a law of nature. Someone should fund a study.
“Do you mind if we join you?”
We looked up to see Will, the boy from the tour, with his father. He was the one who’d spoken.
“Not at all,” I said, doing that thing where you shift your chair a little bit, indicating your willingness to make room.
Will smiled at Emily and she smiled back, and I could see she thought he was cute. It was the same smile as the one she wears when she shows me an outfit she already knows looks awesome. I love that smile. That smile gives me hope she knows how wonderful she is, rather than doubting herself. But it comes and goes.
The boy sat next to her, and I realized he was a full head and shoulders taller than she was. I wondered anew at the enormousness of teenage boys. They go home the summer after sixth or seventh grade and come back in the fall seventeen feet taller. Having never had a son, I usually imagined that the kid’s poor mom comes in one morning, drops her tray (she’s carrying one in this imaginary scene; go with it, okay?), and screams to discover her son is barely fitting in his bed. She flies to get a crowbar to help him get up, then rushes to Target to buy everything three sizes bigger. It’s probably not that sudden, but it seems that way to me.
The boy’s father smiled at Emily. “So, you’re Emily, right?”
“That’s right,” Emily said.
“And you’re Jessica,” the man said to me, proving that he may not have gone to college but he certainly outstripped me in the name-recall contest. “I’m Chris, and this is Will.”
I smiled at him and said, “I remember from this morning.”
There could have been an awkward silence at this point, but as both Chris and I could see the kids liked each other, we bounced the conversation along like a doubles beach volleyball team headed for the regionals.
“What are you thinking of studying at school, Emily?” Chris asked, his clear green eyes regarding my daughter steadily.
Emily blushed slightly. “I’m not sure, maybe engineering?”
“Oh,” said Chris brightly. “You like building things?”
Emily said, “Well . . .”
I jumped in, again unable to help myself. “She always did, you should have seen the Lego cities she built. She likes fixing things, she was the classic take-it-apart-to-see-how-it-works kind of kid. Engineering would suit her down to the ground.” I suddenly realized I’d interrupted Emily, and turned apologetically. “Not that you need to decide right now, of course.” Emily was still smiling, but her eyes warned me that I’d come dangerously close to embarrassing her. I subsided.
Chris looked at his son. “Will was like that, too, but now he wants to study computer science.”
Will grinned at Emily. “I hear the internet is going to catch on.”
“You think?” She smiled back.
Suddenly Chris said, “You know what, you two should move to another table, otherwise it’s going to get overcrowded once the food arrives.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” I said, “and then we can show each other pictures of you two when you were small, which would be painfully embarrassing for you if you had to sit through it.”
“Definitely not into that,” said Will, looking at Emily. “I had a haircut in fourth grade that would be social suicide if anyone saw it.”
Emily nodded. “I dressed like Dora the Explorer for three months straight in second grade, and she has pictures.”
Will grinned. “They don’t realize the power they have.”
“Yes, we do,” said his dad. “Go sit somewhere else so us adults can actually have a conversation.”
Well, that wasn’t awkward at all.
First my mom dragged me into this stupid café, although I was a bit hungry, and then Hot Boy and his dad showed up. And now I was sitting with him all alone and I had zero to talk about. What if he heard what Alice was saying about him? What if he asked me about it and I had to stab myself with a fork in order to cause a diversion?
The waitress showed up with my donut.
“You changed tables,” she said accusingly.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
“Will you be wanting a separate check?”
Oh, great, more awkward. “Yeah,” said Will calmly, “we’ll take separate checks, and can I get a coffee please?”
The waitress eyed him dubiously, but he smiled at her and she softened. He has a freaking dimple on one side of his face that I could honestly use for storage. It is so cute I can’t even.
The donut was huge, so I cut it into pieces, nudging the plate towards Will. He took a piece and said, “Do you really want to study engineering?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I chewed a segment of donut and swallowed. “You know, there’s a reason why donuts are usually fried and heavily sugared. My eyes were so happy to see a donut, but my mouth is now sorely disappointed.”
Will grinned at me—score—and nodded over to where our parents were sitting. “That’s funny,” he said. I turned and saw that they, too, had cut their donut into pieces and were sharing it. “I guess you and your mom are pretty alike.”
I shook my head. “Not really. Maybe we both have small appetites.”
“Or maybe you’re both nice and like to share?”
“Maybe. She’s nicer than I am.”
“Probably. Moms usually are, right?”
I made a face. “Do you read the news? Watch movies? Moms can be evil incarnate.”
Will laughed. “You have sugar on the side of your mouth.”
I licked it, but he smiled and said, “The other side,” so I licked that, too, and he nodded. “You got it.” He handed me a napkin. “My mom left when I was little, so I guess I should have a lower opinion of mothers, but I don’t. My dad’s fine, but he works all the time, so he can be pretty cranky. He also has this weird obsession with chores. What about yours?”
“Same.”
“Chores?”
“Not so much chores, but same working. She’s a lawyer and she works all the time. We have dinner together maybe twice a week.”
“And your dad?”
“I don’t know him very well. They weren’t even together when she found out she was pregnant. He lives in London now, he sends me Paddington Bear stuff every so often.” I smiled. “I think he thinks I’m still ten, but it’s reasonable seeing as he hasn’t actually seen me in years.” I looked at him. “Are you an only child?”
“No, there are four of us, but my older sister left home already.” He said it casually. “My grandma lives with us, so she’s watching my brothers while we’re here. My dad’s spending half his time on the phone, yelling at employees.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a contractor.” He took another bite of donut. “What about you? Why are you on the tour if you don’t want to go to college?”
“What makes you think I don’t want to go to college?”
He waited. “Am I wrong?”
“Everyone goes to college.”
“Not everyone.”
“Well, everyone I know does.”
“And you have to do the same as everyone else?”
I shook my head and didn’t say anything. I suddenly can’t decide if I like this boy or not. He’s cute, but he asks a lot of questions I don’t have answers to. I looked over at my mom, but for once she wasn’t watching me like a hawk. I dug a dollar out of my pocket and started folding it into a butterfly for the waitress.
“That’s cool,” Will said. “Where did you learn that?”
“My grandma taught me. She taught herself origami after she quit smoking to give her something to do with her hands.”
“My dad used to smoke. He quit, too.”
“Does he do origami?”
“No, he cracks his knuckles.”
We both shuddered. I finished the butterfly and spread out its wings, balancing it on a sugar packet.
“Wait,” said Will. He took the sugar packet, tore the corner, tipped out a little sugar, and replaced the butterfly so it appeared to be eating the sugar.
“Funny,” I said.
“Amazing what a little scenery will do, am I right?”
He smiled at me and I felt a bit like a butterfly myself, not to be all gushy about it.
It turned out Chris and I got along very well, which was a pleasant surprise. In general he was a pleasant surprise, because it also turned out he was the most no-bullshit person I had met in a while.
“You’re much nicer than I thought you would be,” he said, for example.
I laughed. “Uh . . . thanks?”
Chris chewed a piece of donut and nodded. “You look like one of the moms at school, friendly but judgy at the same time. Do you know?”
I wasn’t sure I did know but nodded. “I look judgy? That’s not good.” I wanted another donut. Why am I always so hungry? I looked around for the waitress.
He shrugged. “Judgy’s too strong a word. I take it back.”
I asked, “Are the moms at your school not nice?”
“Oh, no, they’re nice. But for some reason the fact that I’m a contractor and not, you know, a fancy doctor or lawyer messes with them. They assume we don’t have money, and although they’re all good liberals and want to treat all people with equal dignity, they also don’t want to be insensitive and invite Will to play polo and discover he doesn’t have his own pony, you know?”
I laughed. “It sounds to me like you’re the one doing the judging. How many families in Los Angeles play polo?”
He grinned. “You’re right, I’m being unfair. A little bit. But, here’s a good example of what I mean: Back in ninth grade, when we started there, one of the moms in Will’s class offered me a bag of hand-me-down clothes, right?”
“Sure, that’s not unusual at all. I have a friend whose daughter is two years older than Emily and she passes stuff down all the time. The kid has excellent taste. Em loves it.”
“Yeah, but this kid was no bigger or older than Will, these were extra clothes they didn’t need. And when I said no thanks, which I did because he has plenty of clothes, she looked embarrassed and I realized she thought I was being proud and that she might have offended me.” He caught the waitress’s eye and signaled for another coffee and two more donuts. I could definitely like this guy.
I shrugged. “So? Did you clear it up?”
Chris stared at the table. “No, actually. I guess word got around that the guy with the dusty boots is sensitive, so nobody ever offered me anything again.” He made a face. “Will isn’t bothered by any of this, none of the kids seem to give a crap about parents anyway. I ask Will what his friends’ parents do and he looks at me like I’m nuts. Why would they talk about old people, when they have themselves to talk about?”
I grinned at him. “This is why children are our future.”
He grinned back. “We should teach them well and let them lead the way?”
“Yeah, if we don’t mind following someone who’s looking at their phone all the time. Was Will always into computers?” I asked.
“Yeah, if by computers you mean video games and Minecraft,” Chris replied. “It’s not like he’s been building microprocessors in the garage, he likes computers the way other kids like sports.” He sighed. “I think he wants to do computer science because it’s a good career, not because he’s deeply passionate about the future of programming.”
“And you didn’t go to college?”
“No, I was sick of school. I wanted to get on with my life, you know?”
The coffee and donuts arrived, and I took a bite while I thought back to that time.
I said, “I never considered not going, it was what everyone did. My sister was already at school, it seemed like fun.”
Chris looked at me. “And was it?”
“Sure. I made good friends, we’re seeing a few of them on this trip.” I shrugged. “And I had archery, which I was really into. It was fun. I hope Emily has as much fun as I did . . . They take things so seriously these days. And the debt is nuts.”
Chris nodded. “Yeah, I never had any debt. I worked in my family business for a few years, then started my own.”
“As a contractor?”
“Yeah. My parents focused on houses, I do larger buildings and stores, but it’s the same work.” He shrugged. “I like it. It pays well, and because my mother-in-law helps with the kids, I can afford better schools. I couldn’t do it without her.” He laughed. “And compared to all those fancy doctors and lawyers, I think I have less stress. What do you do?”
I said seriously, “I’m a fancy, overstressed lawyer.”
Chris made a face. “Whoops.”
I laughed. “It’s fine, I love it. I started out wanting to defend the defenseless, right, like you do when you’re twenty, but then I got pregnant with Emily and had to switch to plan B, which was go into corporate law and make a load of money so I could afford to be a single parent.” I noticed Chris hadn’t asked me about Emily’s dad, unlike everyone else. “Work kind of expanded to fill all my available time, though, so I’m not sure I’m doing all that well on the parenting front.”
I looked over at the kids. They were laughing at something on Emily’s phone and seemed fine. I turned back to find Chris looking at me.
“I’m sure you’re a good mom,” he said. “We all worry.”
I shrugged. “I’m lucky, I have a great nanny who takes amazing care of Emily while I’m stuck at work, but now I worry that I missed all of it.”
“Well, I have a mother-in-law and feel the same way.”
I hesitated, because I wanted to ask where his wife was, but it’s a minefield. He took pity on me.
“My wife left us when the kids were younger. She’d been leaving slowly for a couple of years and her mom had been there a lot, so I’m not entirely sure the kids were as traumatized by it as I was. Her mom took it worst.” He paused and looked over at Will. “He’s always had his head on straight, but my older daughter is a disaster already and she’s only twenty.” Another bite of donut, another sip of coffee. “But I guess like mother like daughter.”
I ignored his comment about his wife because, you know, hos before bros, and said, “Emily’s a pretty good kid, probably because of the nanny.”
“What’s her name?”
“The nanny? Anna.”
“Well, Anna might take care of the day-to-day but you still laid the groundwork, right?”
“Yeah, I guess. And Emily’s not super challenging, she does her work, she goes out with her friends, she comes home when she says she will.” I smiled wryly. “Or she’s got a really good cover and she’s actually running a drug-smuggling ring.”
Chris said, “You never want to give up on a kid. But my daughter’s making it hard not to, and it puts more pressure on the others, too.” He looked at Will again. “He seems fine, but I thought she was, too. Right up until she wasn’t.”