Chapter 25
25
Tatum
Dawn reminds me of myself during a rush hour at the diner, in constant motion as I make sure my customers have everything they need. She’s on my trail everywhere I go in her apartment, bringing me my towels for a shower, my pillows for the bed, my morning coffee hot and fresh alongside my breakfast.
We’re just settling in for an afternoon movie when a series of fast, frantic knocks interrupts Dawn’s attempt to make me a cheese board.
“Sorry to disturb!” June calls out. “Eleanor is on the phone for you, Tatum. She says it’s urgent.”
Eleanor is calling me.
Eleanor is calling me.
Eleanor is calling me . As I walk to the door, my brain keeps reworking the words, searching for the point of emphasis in the sentence that feels the most correct. The whole thing is too bizarre to understand.
June hands me her phone, and I say hello to Eleanor for the very first time.
“Laney broke her leg,” she tells me, not bothering with a greeting in return.
It surprises me, her voice. She speaks in a higher register than I would have guessed. Seeing only pictures of her, I imagined her voice would be dark and smoky. But it’s clear, light, almost bell-like.
“We were playing pickleball, and she and Ben were losing to me and your dad,” she continues. “By a lot. It was going to be the game-winning point, so she made a hero leap for the ball, and she stepped wrong.”
She’s direct. Clinical. It’s exactly what I need as I listen, desperate to process all the information being thrown my way. Eleanor has been going to the family reunion events. She was on a team with my dad. Laney was playing with Ben.
Laney’s leg is broken.
I try again to make sense of it all, but it’s a puzzle with pieces that won’t connect, no matter how hard I try to fit them together.
Ben, the brother I do not know, was Laney’s pickleball partner. Eleanor, the woman staying in my cottage, was playing against them. Eleanor is calling me.
“I’m not sure anyone else in your family has had a chance to tell you yet,” Eleanor continues. “I know you’re all kind of not speaking. But I just thought you’d want to know.” Her voice gets quieter. “It feels like you should be here. Sorry if that’s inappropriate of me to say. I just can’t help but feel like I am a poor stand-in for you.”
If a stranger like Eleanor can sense the gravity of my absence, what must my family feel?
And what is Laney feeling?
“I’m coming,” I tell Eleanor, deciding it before I’ve even registered what it means.
“Good,” Eleanor says. “I drove Carson’s car back to the cottage for them, because they rode to the hospital with your parents. Everything happened so quickly. I figured they haven’t had a chance to fill you in yet, so I went ahead and reached out. I’ve got to go, but I’ll update you as soon as I know more.”
With that, she ends our call.
The way she’s brought up Carson’s car snags at my curiosity. There’s a familiarity in the way she’s mentioned them. A protectiveness that I’m going to flag for further examination, once I’ve worked through everything else I have to do first. Eleanor called me. Laney broke her leg. What the hell is going on?
I relay the story to June the same way Eleanor told it to me.
“You should be with your family,” June says.
Hearing it from her, I realize what it means. Since last night, we’ve known we’re on borrowed time.
Now I’ve cut it even shorter.
Somehow, it’s already over.
June opens the door to Eleanor’s place, and I follow her, needing to gather up my stuff. She grabs her computer and begins searching, telling me who has the cheapest flight back to Illinois. She mentions a direct flight leaving in three hours, with a ticket still available.
“That sounds good,” I say, needing to do so many things at once that I’m not doing anything at all. Obviously I know Laney breaking her leg isn’t catastrophic. She is twenty-five and stubborn and will be determined to heal herself as well as possible.
It’s that I wasn’t there to help when I could’ve been. I wasn’t the one to decide where Carson’s car should go. I didn’t share the news with family members who weren’t around when it happened.
I was the one who wasn’t around.
“I can book the flight for you, if you want,” June offers.
This gives me a clear purpose. I take my wallet out of my purse and hand it over. June gets to work, pausing only to confirm necessary details.
I begin collecting my belongings scattered across Eleanor’s apartment, where I’ve been pretending I’m a fast-moving city girl who has dreams as big as this town. The truth is, I’m a small-town waitress who lives with her parents. I have a family who needs me, and I have been ignoring them out of a smug, misplaced sense of pride.
I break down in tears.
June leaps up, wrapping me in her arms as we slump to the floor. Both cats start circling us, intrigued by this spectacle, walking across whatever limbs of ours they can reach.
“It’s gonna be okay,” June says, kissing my head.
Soon we’re walking to the elevator together the same way we’ve done all week, exploring New York City side by side. Except now it’s time for me to leave it all behind.
“Wait,” I say, realizing. “Dawn.”
I rush back toward her apartment one last time. I don’t even have to knock before she’s in the hall, hugging me.
All the tears I’d dried up resurface. We’ve only known each other a few days, but she’s been so generous with me, so giving in a way I never could have imagined when we first met in this very hall. That’s another piece of the New York magic—the way people here care for one another.
“I’m gonna miss you,” I say.
“Don’t you dare,” she warns, sensing, correctly, that I’m gearing up for a bigger speech.
“Just promise me you’ll act again,” I tell her.
“Promise me you’ll write,” she responds. “All right. That’s enough. I don’t like to cry. Not when I’m not getting paid for it.” She hurries back into her place, leaving June and me in the hallway.
I look at June, bags hung over my shoulder, and ask, “What am I doing?”
“You’re doing what you always do,” she says. “You’re looking out for your family.”
We say nothing on the elevator. Nothing on our walk through the lobby. I don’t wave to the doorman. I can’t even bear to let him know it’s the last time I’ll pass by him.
June has called me a car, and the driver is already parked out front when we make it outside.
“This is it,” we both say at the same time. It’s not enough to make us laugh, but it edges off the devastation.
The driver takes my bag and puts it in the trunk.
All that’s left to do is say goodbye.
“I really like you, June,” I say. “I have since the moment I first met you. And I’ve been so scared of what that meant that I waited too long to do anything about it. If I’d just gone out with you when you asked, we could have had a whole year together. But we only had these few days. Even though this was too short, it was worth it. Thank you. I’m so proud of you.”
I kiss her on the cheek, ready to get in the car and go, doing what I’ve always done. Cutting things off before they’ve gotten too serious.
“Wait,” June says, right as I’m ducking down to get into the back seat. “What if you moved here too? What if we lived together?”
My head hits the car ceiling, the pain of the jolt offering me a single moment to process it all.
“I know it sounds absurd, but think of how happy you’ve been here,” she continues. “I know you have. Not just with me, but with yourself. You know? We could do this together. We could make a life here.”
“June,” I say softly. I’m still in the car, my driver sitting up front stone-faced. If he’s listening, he’s doing an impressive job of staying detached. “I can’t make a decision like this right now. I’ll call you once I’m settled back in Trove Hills. Okay?”
“Okay,” she says, nodding.
And that’s how I leave her, standing on the sidewalk in front of Eleanor’s apartment, waiting for an answer I don’t yet have.