62

Everett couldn’t focus as he packed for New York. As he paced around the airport. As he sat beside Astrid on the flight. The meeting was a blur—he talked about the show and its purpose, and he knew everyone in the meeting loved everything he was saying, even if he could barely remember their names when he shook their hands.

On the sidewalk outside the Imagination Network building, Astrid ran through what had just happened.

“That was a good meeting,” she said.

“Yeah,” Everett said, stunned.

“A really good meeting.”

“Yeah,” he repeated.

“Everett, this is . . . happening. The show. The Imagination Network.” She leaned in and stared at him. “Why don’t you look excited?”

Everett shook his head and rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m excited. Really. I just . . .”

He thought about what Natalie had said, about how there had to be more to life than work, about how maybe he could give work 50 percent instead of 100 percent. He hadn’t really understood her at the time, but now . . .

He thought about Astrid and Jeremy, how he’d been working with them for so long and how he’d be working with all-new people when the show was in New York. He thought about Jeremy working on some other show if he wasn’t around. He thought about Gretel and the way he’d changed his life to stay home with her once before, the way she’d cried and hugged him when she said she didn’t want him to move. He thought about his parents and how, as the saying goes, they weren’t getting any younger.

He thought about all the kids he could reach with a national show. All of the families he could influence, the emails he could answer, the feelings he could explain.

And then he thought about Teddy. Her laugh and her smile and her. The way that if he really did this, if he really moved, he didn’t know if things between them could ever be fixed.

“Hey, Astrid,” he said, suddenly calm, “do you think we can go back up there? I have something I need to ask them.”