CHAPTER 1
Hollywood’s coming today.
I’m not going to lose my house.
Those two thoughts surface in the same moment as the sun starts to brighten my room. I’ve been paid for my screenplay, and the bonus money for letting them film here will hit my bank account at noon. Good-bye unpaid real estate taxes. Good-bye credit card debt. And to think, Ben’s saying good-bye to me has made it all possible. I don’t know how this day could get any better. I hop out of bed, grab my heaviest morning sweater, and head downstairs. I pour my coffee and go out to the porch to watch the sunrise.
Whoever buys this house from me, I always think, will tear it down. It’s over a hundred years old; everything’s broken. There’s a certain point in January when the wind blows right into the kitchen and we have to duct-tape a fleece blanket over the doorframe. The floorboards droop; there are only two bathrooms and they’re both upstairs. Each bedroom has a closet designed to house six outfits, preferably for very small people. Ben had a list of house complaints he used to like to run through daily, and I could never shake the feeling that he was really complaining about me.
This house is a disaster, sure. But I fell in love with it when I first looked down the long windy path of the driveway. The magnolia trees that line either side touch in the middle, so that now, in April, you drive through a tunnel of pink flowers. When you emerge onto the main road it feels like you’ve been transported from one world to another, like a bride leaving the church. It feels like a treat going out for milk, and it feels like a treat coming home.
The house was built by a British doctor named George Faircloth who lived in Manhattan and came upstate to Laurel Ridge in the summer, which explains the complete lack of winterization. It was built to be enjoyed on a seventy-eight-degree day and primarily from the outside. I imagine his landscaping this property like a maestro, arranging the magnolias and the forsythia beneath them to announce the beginning of spring. After a long gray winter, these first pink and yellow blooms shout, “Something’s happening!” By May they’ll have gone green with the rest of the yard, a quiet before the peonies and hydrangea bloom.
I knew I’d do anything to live here when I saw the tea house in the back. It’s a one-room structure the doctor had commissioned to honor the ritual of formal tea. Where the main house is flimsy white clapboard with peeling black shutters, the tea house is made of gray stone with a slate roof. It has a small working fireplace and oak-paneled walls. It’s as if Dr. Faircloth reached over the pond and plucked it out of the English countryside. I distinctly remember hearing Ben use the word “shed” when we walked into it, and I ignored him the way you do when you’re trying to stay married.
The first morning we woke up here, I got up at first light because we didn’t have any curtains yet. I took my coffee to the front porch, and the sunrise was the surprise of my life. I’d never seen the house at six A.M. I didn’t even know we were facing east. It was like a gift with purchase, a reward for loving this broken place.
I stand on the porch now, taking it in before the movie crew arrives. Pink ribbons, then orange creep up behind the wide-armed oak tree at the end of my lawn. The sun rises behind it differently every day. Some days it’s a solid bar of sherbet that rolls up like movie credits and fills the sky. Some days the light dapples through the leaves in a muted gray. The oak won’t have leaves for a few weeks, just tiny yellow and white blooms pollinating one another and promising a lawn full of acorns. My lawn is its best self in April, particularly in the morning when it’s dew-kissed and catching the light. I don’t know the science behind all of it, but I know the rhythm of this property like I know my own body. The sun will rise here every single day.
By the time I’ve gotten my kids up and fed and off to school, I’ve changed my clothes six times. I stand in front of the mirror in the same jeans and T-shirt I started with, and realize the problem is my hair. The frizz isn’t as bad as it’s going to be in August, but it’s still pretty intense. People in Hollywood have tamed hair, or if it’s wild, it’s been professionally disorganized. I dunk my head in my bathroom sink and then get to work blowing out my hair piece by piece, something I don’t think I’ve done since my wedding day in my childhood bathroom with my bridesmaids crammed in behind me.
When my hair is straight, it’s still only nine A.M. They’re supposed to be here at ten, and I know that if I spend any more time in front of a mirror, I am going to overthink myself into a panic. I decide I look perfectly fine for a thirty-nine-year-old mother of two. And it’s not like I’m auditioning for this movie; I wrote it. I decide to go into town and do some non-urgent errands. Maybe I’ll get home after they’ve arrived so I can show up in an oh-hey-I-lost-track-of-time kind of way. I’ll walk into the Hollywood version of my real-life drama in full swing, like it’s some kind of sick surprise party.
I kill as much time as I can by dropping a pair of boots at the shoe repair and browsing the discount rack at the bookstore. I stop by the hardware store to chat with Mr. Mapleton about his hip surgery and to pick up the stack of crossword puzzles he saves me from his paper each week. By ten o’clock, I run out of things to do, so I know it’s time to go home and see exactly what a movie crew looks like and what the consequences will be to my lawn.
I’ve misjudged, and they’re late, so I’m back on the front porch watching their arrival. I grip the railing as the eighteen-wheelers barrel down my dirt driveway, dislodging the lowest magnolia blossoms and darkening the sky with startled birds. For a second, my whole property looks like a Hitchcock movie.
I never saw this coming. I’m as surprised as anybody that The Tea House is being made into a real movie. The last movie I wrote was called Kisses for Christmas, an eighty-minute TV movie with well-timed breaks in the action to make room for the forty minutes of commercials. The one before that was Hometown Hearts, which is pretty much the same story, but it takes place in the fall. My superpower is methodically placing a man and woman in the same shiny town, populated by unusually happy people with maddeningly small problems. They bristle at first and then fall in love. It’s all smiles until one of them leaves, but then comes back immediately after the commercial break. Every. Single. Time.
The Tea House is a departure from the formula and is definitely the best thing I’ve ever written. The first thing my agent, Jackie, said when she’d finished reading it was, “Are you okay?” I laughed because, sure, it did seem like I’d gone dark. The story runs deeper, with heavy doses of anguish and introspection, and for sure the guy doesn’t come back at the end. In the months after Ben left, I sold two fun, light scripts to The Romance Channel, but then this darker thing sort of spilled out of me. I’d tried to keep my personal life to myself after Ben left, but I guess some stories just want to be told.
“I mean this is great,” she started. “But this is like a big film, not for The Romance Channel. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to pitch this to major studios.”
“That’s going to be a major waste of your time,” I said, pulling crabgrass in my front yard. “No one wants to watch two hours of angst and abandonment. I swear I tried to perk it up at the end, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t stomach him walking back through the door.”
“Nora. It hasn’t even been a year.”
“I know. So I need to get back to what I do best. Do whatever you want with this thing; I think maybe I just needed to get it off my chest. Everything okay with your mom?”
“She’s fine. Give me a couple of weeks on this. This script is a game changer.”
As the first truck stops in front of my house, nine of its eighteen wheels on my grass, I realize that the game has indeed changed. I hold on to the porch railing for support as two more trucks start unloading cameras, lighting, furniture, people.
A pink-haired young woman with a clipboard and a smile approaches me. “Hey, you must be Nora. Don’t freak out. Cuz I’d be totally freaking out. I’m Weezie, Leo’s assistant.”
“Hi. Not freaking out. I can replant the grass.” I reach out to shake her free hand.
Another woman, closer to my age in a black jumpsuit, approaches. “I’m Meredith Cohen, executive producer.”
“Nora Hamilton, homeowner,” I manage, still hanging on to the porch railing. “And writer,” I add, because I’m awkward.
“Listen,” Meredith says. “We’re a lot. Hell, just Leo’s a lot these days. We’re going to make a lot of noise and a big mess, and then we’ll clean it all up and be out of your hair in two days. Three, tops.”
“That’s fine; it’s what I expected. I’ve never seen a movie shoot before, kind of exciting.” A red pickup truck pulls completely onto the grass, towing a silver Airstream trailer. “What’s that?”
Weezie turns and laughs. “Oh, here he is. Of course, that’s Leo. We’re all staying at the Breezeport Hilton; he doesn’t stay at Hiltons.” She rolls her eyes and smiles again, like it’s mildly annoying but also adorable that this guy is wrecking my lawn.
“Leo Vance is going to sleep in that thing? In my front yard?”
“It can’t be avoided. He’s quirky. But he’s got a bathroom in there and we have a honeywagon coming for everyone else. So don’t worry about your house.”
The Airstream door opens and out steps a forty-year-old, shoeless superstar. His jeans hang too low and his gray T-shirt is torn in two places. His hair needs a trim, and he’s way too handsome to play Ben. But then again, Naomi Sanchez is playing me. He squints up at the sky as he gets his bearings, as if he’s emerging from the dark after twenty-four hours. It’s eleven A.M. and we’re only a ninety-minute drive from New York City.
Leo Vance is the highest-paid leading man in Hollywood. I know this because I’ve been googling him for three days. He has homes in Manhattan, Bel Air, and Cap d’Antibes. He owns a share of an NBA franchise. No kids, never married. A Libra. He’s originally from New Jersey and has a brother.
I’ve seen every one of Leo’s movies, which isn’t really a credit to him. I’ve seen a lot of movies. He’s a good actor, and he’s most famous for his smoldering stare. I have to say, it’s a little over the top. In his first film, Sycamore Nights, he gave his co-star Aileen Bennett a series of white-hot smolders that got him named Sexiest Man Alive that year. I guess it became his signature move, so he kept it up film after film, even when it was entirely unnecessary. Like in Battle for the Home Front, he’s telling his newly pregnant wife that he has to go away to war, and he’s smoldering. Or in Class Action, he’s giving a commencement speech at a military academy and smoldering all over everyone’s parents and grandparents. And don’t get me started on African Rose. A refugee center with a wild malaria outbreak is no place to smolder. Leo Vance seems prone to the inappropriate oozing of sex appeal.
When the smolder is turned off, he has an impressive range of smiles that are unique to each film. They range from timid to maniacal, and I’ve always admired the way he can keep each one consistent throughout an entire film. I’m curious to see what smile he’ll invent for The Tea House. What smile would he imagine Ben having? I can’t even remember the last time I saw Ben smile.
Leo Vance is walking toward my porch, and I brace myself for an introduction. Perfection on the screen, scruffy in real life. He is going to be transformed into a man with a lot of issues who ends up walking away from the woman he built a life with. Leave it to Ben to be maddening enough to make me finally write something worthwhile. I smile at the irony of Ben actually helping out after all.
Leo brushes past me on the porch like I’m not there, then stops and takes a step back. “You’re missing a dimple,” he says.
“The other one’s inside,” I say.
He nods and walks into my house like he owns the place. Not much of a meet cute.
Meeting the director, Martin Cox, is as intimidating as I anticipated. Weezie’s gone in after Leo, so he finds Meredith and me on the porch. “You must be Nora.” He’s not tall but he’s big, and I can’t decide if he’s physically big or if it’s his presence that takes up a lot of space.
I shake his hand and try not to say anything else. If I start talking, I’ll tell him what I thought of the final scene in Alabaster and why I think he was robbed of an Oscar. I’ll tell him that the lighting alone in The Woman Beneath was sublime. Mainly to avoid using the word “sublime,” I keep my mouth shut.
“So, can we see it?” he asks. I lead Meredith and Martin behind my house to where the tea house sits at the entrance to the woods. There is no path to it, just lawn, so that a consequence of visiting the tea house is almost always wet shoes. I’d left the big oak door open, as is my habit, because with the door open, you can see straight through the steel windows on the back wall into the mouth of the forest. It gives me the feeling of endless possibility.
The tea house is a sacred space to me. The space in which I have been able to preserve myself by writing. And, unlike the main house, it is airtight against the elements. I imagine the Faircloths approaching the tea house as I do, anticipating a fire in the fireplace and a table laid with tea and treats. I imagine lovers meeting here for hushed conversation and first kisses. Ben had always wanted to use it for storage.
It may have come down to that, for all I know. My belief that the last thing the world needs is more storage versus Ben’s belief that he needed a third motorcycle. Among the many consolations around his leaving are that he took most of his stuff with him, and he didn’t ask for the kids.
The tea house plays prominently in the breakup of our marriage, which is what earned it the title role. Ben resented the time I spent out there; he resented the work I did. He resented the fact that I’d been paying our bills for the past ten years. Which made two of us, actually. The more competent I became at taking care of our family, the more he despised me. The more he despised me, the harder I worked to make things right. Me writing in the tea house was a mirror he didn’t want to look into. That’s how it goes in the movie. In real life, I don’t know, maybe he left because he just wanted more storage. Ben wanted more of just about everything.
Now, as we approach, I hear Martin catch his breath. “It’s otherworldly,” he says. “The photo doesn’t do it justice.”
I smile and keep walking. “Well, it’s certainly from another time. This is where I write.”
It’s warm for April, and the slate roof glistens in the sun from last night’s rain. Two giant hydrangea bushes flank the door. They’re getting their first leaves now, hopeful celery-colored things, but soon they’ll be bursting with cerulean blue blooms the size of my head. “If you could have waited until July, you would have seen these in bloom,” I say to no one, because Martin has already walked inside.
“This is absolutely perfect,” he says, running his hands over the paneled walls. He pulls out a walkie-talkie. “I’m back in the tea house. Bring the linens for the daybed, I’m going to need three o’clock sunshine coming through the back window. And a mop. Make sure Leo and Naomi are in makeup.”
Meredith gives me a little wink, presumably to make me feel better about the mop comment. I give her a shrug, what do I care? “Okay, so I’ll get out of your way, let me know if you need anything.”
I go back into my house, relieved to find it empty. Outside every window, there is activity—a catering truck, a woman chasing Leo Vance with a spray bottle. From the largest trailer emerges Naomi Sanchez, somehow all legs in a frumpy housedress. I assume she’s dressed up as how Martin imagined me. I first saw Naomi Sanchez in Hustler’s Revenge when she was about twenty-five. There was a scene where she discovered she’d been double-crossed that was shot so tight that her whole face filled the screen. Where are her pores, I’d wondered. At thirty-two, she is still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
I text Kate: Leo Vance was in my house. Naomi Sanchez is exquisite.
Kate: Dying.
I’m having a hard time figuring out what I should be doing. I mean I’m inside my house which isn’t a writing-working space. Inside my house is a mom-ing space. The kitchen is still a mess from breakfast, and it occurs to me that Leo Vance has seen my pancake spatter and has smelled my bacon grease. I’m mildly agitated that he’s been in here as I start to clean. There will have to be boundaries of some sort. I don’t want to walk in here tomorrow and find him smoldering at my dishwasher.
I call my sister, and her nanny, Leonora, answers. “She’s out with her friends,” she says. Penny and her husband, Rick, live in Manhattan and East Hampton and are frequently featured in Town & Country wearing the right things with the right people. This is the first time in my life I’m doing something cooler than Penny, so I leave a message. “Please tell her I called and that Naomi Sanchez and Leo Vance are in my driveway.” Leonora squeals, and I am satisfied.
Once my kitchen is clean, I try to think of what I’d normally be doing. It’s Wednesday, and on Wednesdays we eat meatloaf. Of course! I take a pound of ground turkey out of the freezer and place it on the counter. This doesn’t take as long as I’d hoped.
I watch through the corner window in the sunroom. They’re filming the scene where I tell Ben that it might help if we both had a steady paycheck. It was the day he lumped me in with all the other people who don’t have the vision to believe in his dreams. I was a drone, a robot, a slave to convention. I’m pretty sure it was the last straw. I imagine my words coming out of Naomi’s perfect mouth, and I start to think maybe this film was cast all wrong. How is Leo Vance going to be able to be as dismissive as Ben was when he’s looking at a woman like that? It seems like people as beautiful as the two of them might have been able to work things out. No man’s going to walk away from Naomi Sanchez.
I’ve been watching the filming for an hour when I realize it’s time to go get my kids. I open my garage to find three guys smoking in my driveway. They drop their cigarettes and extinguish them with their shoes and move to the side and wave me out, like I’m in some kind of valet-parking situation. I have no choice but to drive up onto my own grass to get around the trucks and onto the dirt portion of my driveway that takes me to the main road.
It feels good to put the chaos behind me and drive out into Laurel Ridge where nothing ever changes. Ben bought into this town because he was literally out of choices. He wanted a big life in the city—Penny’s life, to be exact. But when that proved to be too expensive, he wanted a big house in a commutable suburb. That was impossible too. As I got more and more pregnant with Arthur and it became clear that our walk-up studio apartment would never contain us, we were in a race against the clock. We had twenty thousand dollars to put down on a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house, and a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house was a lot farther from the city than Ben had imagined.
Ben told his friends that we bought a teardown in the sticks as an investment. It’s an up-and-coming town, he told them, which I always thought was funny because this town’s motto should be: We Are Neither Up Nor Coming. It’s a town that agonizes over progress of any kind, secretly fantasizing that it was the model for Main Street at Disneyland. There’s an architectural review board and a planning commission whose sole purpose is to keep people like Ben from making Laurel Ridge less quaint.
We have six or seven shops that have been in Laurel Ridge since the beginning of time. These shop owners enjoy a cultlike loyalty from their patrons. Laurel Ridge is a place where you’ll always be able to buy a hammer from a guy you know and a bowl of homemade ice cream scooped by a teenager. A handful of other businesses pop up and collapse as people come from Manhattan to sell us designer vitamins and personalized dog cookies. They rarely last a year.
At the end of town is Laurel Ridge Elementary. I park and find my friends among a group of parents on the playground, like this is just some normal day.
“OMG spill it,” says Jenna. She’s standing under the basketball hoop with Kate.
“What?” I say, trying to be casual. “Just hanging with Leo and Naomi, whatever.”
“Is he cute? Does he give you that look?” Kate asks.
“Yes and no. Absolutely cute and he’s barely looked at me.”
“So, the hair’s a waste?” Jenna’s referring to the fact that I’ve blown out my hair.
“Yeah, that was a little overboard,” I admit. “If you saw Naomi Sanchez in person you’d understand why he wasn’t so focused on me.”
“Hey, Nora.” Molly Richter approaches us. “Looking good, nice hair.” Molly’s that classic bitch you knew in middle school who never snapped out of it. We have to be nice to her because she’s head of the PTA and seems to have the authority to randomly assign volunteer positions. We steer clear of Molly Richter like people used to steer clear of the draft.
“I hear you’re playing Hollywood this week,” she goes on.
“I am.” It’s important when talking to Molly that you don’t offer any additional information or ask any follow-up questions.
“Well, cute. Don’t forget that Oliver Twist rehearsals are next Wednesday after school and you’ve signed up to watch the kids backstage.”
“How could I forget? It’s all Arthur talks about.” And I’ve shown my hand. I should never have blown out my hair. Kate gasps, like I’m sinking into quicksand and she has no rope to throw me.
“Oh, is Arthur interested in a big part?” Molly doesn’t give me a chance to respond. “That’s great! Because I was going to name you play chairman, and if he’s going to be so involved, you’ll be there anyway. Perfect.” She jots something down in her Columbo-style notebook as she turns on her heel and walks away.
Jenna is laughing. “You’re so screwed.”
“Yeah, I hate to say it, but you are,” Kate says. “If you say no, not that she even gave you a chance, she’ll make sure Arthur’s a tree or a stone or something.” Tryouts were today, so I’m hoping it’s too late for Molly to wield her power and blackball my ten-year-old. Arthur is in the middle of another round of spring sports disasters, and this play is a lifeline.
“I know. And it’s fine. If Arthur gets a part, I’ll get people to help.”
“No one wants to help,” says Jenna.
“Then I’ll do whatever it is. This is literally everything to Arthur. It’s the first thing I’ve seen him excited about since Ben left.”
I don’t usually mention Ben. Not because it’s too painful, but because I almost never think about him. I’ve created an awkward silence though, and it seems to work to my benefit.
“We’ll help,” they say.
“You guys are the best.” The bell rings and dozens of children pour out of the school. Arthur runs over to us, dumps his backpack at my feet, and chases a bunch of kids to the jungle gym. I’m not sure what this means about how his audition went.
Bernadette, the eight-year-old boss of my family, barrels over to me and slams me with a hug. “Did he say anything about your hair?”
“He did not; I should have worn yours.” I smooth my hands over Bernadette’s brown curls. They seem straight out of The Little Rascals, like old-fashioned hair.
“Let’s go,” she commands. “They’re leaving in three hours.”
“They’ll be back tomorrow,” I say. Bernadette looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Okay, fine.” I call to Arthur, and he drags his body across the blacktop.
“Seriously? It’s only three-fifteen. Does weirdo need to get home to stare at the movie stars?” Arthur wiggles his fingers, failing to seem menacing.
“How was the audition?” I ask.
“I got it.” Arthur gives me a half smile that tells me he doesn’t want me to make a scene on the playground.
I pick up his backpack. “Let’s get out of here before I do something embarrassing.”
Bernadette is out of her mind as we round the last curve of our driveway. Arthur is committed to trying to seem like he’s too cool for the biggest stars in Hollywood. They’d be lucky to meet him, he seems to want us to think. He’s got a major role in Oliver Twist after all. “Mom, she’s so embarrassing. Everyone at recess and lunch was asking me about this movie. We’re like freaks in town.”
We pass the Airstream trailer and two eighteen-wheelers before we can even see our garage. A table with pastries and sandwiches blocks my way. I roll down the passenger window and indicate the garage. A young man in a red trucker hat happily agrees to move his operation onto my porch, but not before giving each of my kids a donut.
“This is epic,” says Bernadette.
“It’s a donut,” says Arthur.
I close the garage door before we’re even out of the car, happy to be back in my cocoon. Everything outside feels infested with noise and tires and people making decisions who are not me. When I get upstairs, I’ll pull all of the curtains. There will be homework, dinner, Wheel of Fortune, bed. Their contract says they have to leave by six.
As we climb the stairs into the kitchen, Bernadette goes into overdrive. “Did you meet Naomi? Is she as pretty as she was in The Mariner’s Wife? Is Leo here yet? Is he tall or not? Frannie says he’s short and stands on a box when they . . .” She stops when we get to the top of the stairs and see Leo sitting at our kitchen counter. She’s probably out of breath anyway.
Leo stands slowly, rolling up to his full height of about six feet two inches. He gives Bernadette a stern look. “I am not short, young lady.” Bernadette smiles and blushes and covers her face all in a single instant.
“Ha! There it is!” Leo motions to her with his beer. Which is my in-case-Kate-and-Mickey-stop-by beer, I notice.
“What?” Arthur asks, a little alarmed.
“The missing dimple. I’ve been looking all over the house for it. Your mom’s missing dimple is right there on your sister’s cheek.” Bernadette can’t stop smiling, and Arthur rolls his eyes.
I realize that I haven’t moved since we came up from the garage. I’m frozen with a half a donut in my hand. “Yes, well done. That’s where I keep it.”
Leo goes back to his beer, and after a silence that seems to only be uncomfortable for me, I say, “So, I’m Nora. I’m the writer, and this is my house.”
“Leo.”
“I’m Bernadette, and this is Arthur.”
“Cheers.”
“Are you supposed to be in here?” asks Arthur.
“I filmed my bit for today, now they’re doing a few scenes with Naomi alone. Dark stuff, this film.”
“Well, yes. I was in a mood.”
“She’s in a better mood now,” offers Bernadette.
“Yes. And we need to get started with homework,” I say.
“I’ll just be a little longer. My trailer is hot and I was working on this crossword.” He indicates the crossword that I’d been saving for tonight. It’s Wednesday, and that’s my favorite crossword day, not too easy and not too hard. My kids know this and look at me in tandem, neither seeming like they could predict what comes next.
“Well, okay,” I say. Lawn, beer, crossword. I’m keeping score.
I stand by the sink, donut in hand, watching the three of them. Leo working my puzzle. My kids pulling folders out of their backpacks, trying to act normal. Bernadette needs markers; Leo hands her some. She watches him as she colors. Arthur has a sheet of fractions he needs to do within a minute, so he pulls up the stopwatch on his phone. I watch this incongruous threesome, a scene out of I don’t know what.
“So, what do you usually do now?” Leo breaks the silence.
“Oh, I start dinner.” Grateful for the reminder, I begin to move around the kitchen. I ditch the donut, wipe the counter, open the fridge. The ground turkey has defrosted on the counter so I just need an egg. I place the turkey in a bowl and crack the egg into it.
“Dear God, what are you doing?” asks Leo. Where other people get his famous smolder, I get the scrunched-up look of disgust.
“It’s meatloaf Wednesday,” Bernadette tells him.
“That can’t be right,” he says, mesmerized.
I chop an onion and add it. I throw in some bread crumbs. Leo cannot take his eyes off my bowl. “That is truly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.” And then as I begin to mix it with my hands, “I stand corrected.” My kids laugh.
Weezie comes looking for him at about five o’clock and doesn’t seem too surprised to find him tipsy. “Come on, let’s get you back into makeup. We need to reshoot a few things before dark.”
Leo makes what I can only call the agony face, the face my kids make when I tell them we’re having fish for dinner. “No. Please. Don’t tell me there’s more.”
“Of course there’s more. We have one, maybe two days left here before we wrap.”
Leo clutches his beer. “But it’s so depressing. You guys, your mom is so depressing. I just can’t take it.”
“She’s actually fun,” Arthur says. “And the rest of her movies are kinda dumb but with super-happy endings.”
“He’s right,” I admit. “Dumb and happy. This was kind of a one-off, sorry.”
He studies his empty beer bottle. “Can’t he just come back? Like have an epiphany or something and come back?”
Arthur hides his face by pretending to review his fractions. Ben having an epiphany would be a salve to Arthur’s open wound. “He’s not coming back,” I say.