23. Chapter 23
Chapter 23
Maggie: I will give you all my worldly possessions if you come to my parents’ house and save me from this.
I send this text to Chase, my phone partially hidden under the large dining room table where Devon, Chelsea and her family, and I are having dinner with my dad … and June.
There are pictures of my mom and our family hanging all over the walls of this room. Her touch is everywhere, from the drapes, to the large contemporary shelving on the south side of the room, to the floors, which were updated a couple of years ago. This room is all her. This house is all her.
My dad is sitting in his normal seat at the head of the table, and on his right sits June. Their adjoined hands resting on the top of the table.
“June and I are dating,” my dad says, grinning at all of us. He looks over at June and they give each other a smile. It’s one of those intimate ones, full of meaning.
He didn’t just start with that. There was a lot of pomp and circumstance leading up to this announcement. First the invitation, which we all got late last night via text. It’s not rare for us to all have Sunday dinner as a family, but we haven’t done it in a while. It didn’t seem like a big deal until the second text came in .
Dad: I’d like to talk to you all about something.
That’s when we switched over to our sibling WhatsApp group.
Chelsea: What do you think Dad’s going to tell us?
Maggie: My gut is on June.
Devon: Gross.
Turns out my gut was right. Stupid gut.
Chelsea got there first, and then Devon and I somehow showed up at the same time not long after her. Chelsea nodded her head toward the kitchen when Devon and I entered the house, and we walked over to find June there, helping my dad with the finishing touches on dinner. He made roasted chicken and potatoes, one of our favorite family dinners growing up. My dad and June smiled at each other and laughed as they worked together.
It was different than the two of them sitting in a dim room listening to music and drinking wine. Under normal circumstances, I might have thought this whole kitchen routine was cute; instead it felt foreign and odd.
I think I’m the least taken aback, because of what I caught the other night. But I never shared it with Chelsea and Devon—it somehow didn’t feel right to. I was still processing it myself. In hindsight, I probably should have told them—maybe this would have felt less awkward.
When we entered the dining room, the table was set nicer than it usually is. June’s doing, I’d guess. My dad was never one to set the table formally. We were using Mom’s fine china and silver that we’d usually only bring out at Christmas. My heart did a little wrenching thing when I saw it. I took some steadying breaths.
Then when we went to seat ourselves and June took the spot where our mom used to sit, I felt a weight land in my gut, like I had swallowed a massive rock. Roasted chicken may no longer be my favorite dinner. It might always be associated with this feeling.
“That’s … great.” Mark, Chelsea’s husband, is the first to speak. I think he couldn’t take the awkward silence that landed on the room after our dad’s announcement.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice coming out breathy.
“Yeah, great,” Chelsea says, using her extra cheerful fake-sounding voice. Avery is on her lap, playing with the white cloth napkin, putting it on her face and giggling.
Devon just sits there, his arms folded, an angry look on his face.
“I know this might be strange for all of you,” June says. “I promise, this is not what we were expecting.” She looks at my dad again.
“June has been wonderful, helping me work through my grief. She’s been a rock for me.”
Devon snorts and it sounds sarcastic.
“Are you going to get married, Papa?” Alice asks, sitting in the seat next to me. She’s a very astute four-year-old—she picks up on things that a normal child her age probably wouldn’t. But she’s smart like that. She already knows her ABCs.
She also has an obsession with Disney princesses, as evidenced by the Elsa dress she’s chosen to wear to dinner. She’s holding a butter knife—a silver one from my mom’s collection—and has it pointed at my dad and June. Chelsea reaches over and snatches the knife out of her hand. I give Alice my phone to keep her occupied.
My dad does a nervous laugh. “Not yet, Alice in Wonderland,” he says, using the nickname he gave her at birth.
Not … yet ?
I need my phone back. I need to text Chase for help. He’s got to use his wingman skills and get me out of here. But Elsa, a.k.a. Alice, has my phone.
“Mommy, what does C-H-A-S-E spell?” Alice asks, holding my phone up to show Chelsea.
“Chase,” Chelsea says. She looks at my phone and then at me. Her brow pinched. “You’re getting texts from him?”
I grab the phone from Alice, seeing Chase’s name on the lock screen. “We’re friends. I told you.”
“No one can replace her,” Devon says, his voice elevated.
Chelsea and I look over at the other side of the table where my dad and June are still sitting, still holding hands, and Devon is staring at them, red faced.
I just missed something. What did I miss?
“I’m not looking to replace your mom.” My dad’s face is starting to turn a matching shade of red.
I swivel my head back to Chelsea, who gives me wide eyes and a quick shake of her head. We need to intervene. But I’m not sure how to do it.
“Couldn’t you, like, get a dog or something?” Devon asks, his voice getting louder.
“This isn’t about being lonely,” Dad says.
“Sex, then?” Devon asks.
“Devon!” Chelsea says, the pitch of her voice bordering on shrill .
“That’s not your business, son,” my dad says, his voice loud and booming.
“What is sex?” Alice asks the room.
June is now the color of a beet, and it feels like the temperature in the room has gone up a hundred degrees.
Everyone starts talking over each other—words are being said between Devon and my dad that are going to be hard to take back. June looks like she might cry.
I glance at Chelsea and see a look of desperation on her face. We make eye contact and her eyes plead with me. I know my job. I’ve always been the peacemaker of the family. It’s the plight of the middle child. How do I fix this? What can I say?
I look down at the phone in my lap. And then my head jerks up.
“CHASE HAS MOM’S PHONE NUMBER!”
The words come out super loud, like they just exploded from my mouth.
The room goes silent. All heads turn toward me. Avery starts to whine in Chelsea’s lap, and Mark gets up and lifts her into his arms. He coaxes Alice from the table with promises of candy and the three of them exit the room. Lucky.
“What?” Chelsea asks as her family leaves, confusion on her face.
“Who’s Chase?” Dad asks.
“Mom’s phone?” says Devon.
I swallow. That was a real knee-jerk reaction. I could have yelled fire … that might have been better.
I take a breath. “You all know Chase. He was at the party and then at Drives for Dreams.”
My dad nods his head slowly, remembering. He looks to June, who gives him questioning eyes .
“Devon gave him a ride in the Lambo?” my dad asks.
I nod my head. “Yes. He’s … he’s not a client or a potential client. His name is Chase Beckett. And he has Mom’s phone number,” I say.
“What?” Devon says, his ire now directed at me. Good, good … that was the point of my outburst. Even if I have so many regrets already.
“I don’t understand,” says Chelsea.
I close my eyes and take a steadying breath before opening them. “I was texting Mom’s phone. After she died. It was kind of like therapy,” I add, after seeing the confused/concerned look on my dad’s face. “It felt like therapy, at least.”
“Maggie,” Chelsea says, and I look to see her watery eyes.
I blink rapidly, looking away from her. I can’t cry right now. “So then I found out that Dad had turned off Mom’s phone.”
“I’m so sorry, Magpie,” my dad says, his voice quiet. “Had I known—”
“It’s okay, Dad.” I cut him off. “I understand.” I give him a closed-mouth smile. “It turns out that my texts started going to someone.”
Chelsea’s eyes go wide. “Chase?”
“Yes,” I say. “Chase.”
“Wait … the guy that wants to bring his car to the shop?” Devon asks. He’s still not grasping this. “The one I gave a ride in the Lamborghini?”
“Wait … why was he at both events?” Chelsea asks.
“I … invited him.” I nibble on my bottom lip after this declaration. It’s weird to begin with, but inviting him to that party and then to Drives for Dreams makes it ten times crazier.
“I don’t understand, Magpie,” Dad says.
I swallow, looking at him and then to June. She gives me a comforting smile, dipping her chin as if to urge me on. I’m suddenly grateful for her steadying presence.
“Chase wrote me back after he started getting my texts that were meant for Mom, and we sort of … started texting.”
“What?” Devon says. He’s got triple chins now, the way he’s pulled his face so far inward. His lips are pulled downward.
“Catch up, Devon,” Chelsea says. “Our sister has been texting a stranger, thinking it was Mom’s phone, and then invited him to our family business work events.”
I shoot her an annoyed look. There’s an accusatory tone to her voice. She’s not wrong, but it’s so much more than that.
“So he doesn’t want his car wrapped?” Devon asks.
I shake my head.
“No Lexus LC five hundred?”
“He really does drive a Honda Accord.”
Devon makes a sour face at this bit of info.
“Wait … so that story was totally made up. Did his mom really die?” Chelsea asks.
“She did,” I say.
“Before Mom?”
I shake my head. It feels wrong to share this part of Chase. Like it’s not my story to tell. “In March,” is all I offer.
I’m not sure if my family can put two and two together with this information.
“That’s … how sad,” June says, her head tilted to the side, her soft eyes on me.
“So are you like, what? Are you with this guy or something?” Devon asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “We’re friends.”
June makes a little smacking noise with her mouth and I look back at her. She has her hand resting on her heart. “I think that’s just lovely,” she says. “What a way to meet someone.”
“A creepy way,” Chelsea says.
I squint my eyes at Chelsea, annoyed with her reaction. I should be more understanding. Chase has become more to me than just someone I’ve been texting. So much more. But it’s hard to convey that when the way we met is just so freaking weird.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” I say, looking around the room at my family. The family who will probably have another meeting without me, this time to discuss my sanity. I’m now fragile with a side of insane.
“Well,” my dad says after a few beats of silence. He looks around the room. “Who wants some pie?”
Devon raises his hand. “I’ll take some.”
“Me too,” Chelsea says.
And just like that, my job is done. Peace once again restored. At least for now.
I feel Chase’s chuckle more than I hear it. We’re lying on my bed and I’m turned toward him, my face buried into his shoulder, his arm around me.
“You said you would take it to the grave,” Chase says.
“I know,” I say, the words coming out muffled with my face against his shirt.
He smells of that same cologne—the one I still can’t name—mixed with the scent of fabric softener from the black fitted tee he’s wearing.
I lift my face up and give him a defeated look. Then I lie back, using his bicep as a pillow. He pulls me toward him, resting his hand on my arm. He gives it a squeeze .
I texted Chase before I left my dad’s house, asking if he could come over. Hannah has been working all weekend on the same case, the one that’s been taking all her time for the past month.
I needed to vent, and who better to vent to than the reason for my need to vent? Sort of. He’s more like an innocent bystander.
When Chase got here I gave him a tour of our small apartment, and then we took a seat on my bed and I started telling him what happened. As we talked, he kicked off his flip-flops, scooted back on my full-size bed, and laid his head on my pillow, patting the spot he’d left next to him. That’s how we ended up here, lying on my bed, looking up at the dormant ceiling fan.
“Well, the cat’s out of the bag,” he says.
“I hate that saying. Who puts a cat in a bag?”
“Fine, the pig is in the poke?”
“Try again.”
He lets out a breath. “You can’t take it back. It’s out there.”
“I could find a witch and have her cast a spell?”
“Excellent idea.”
I sigh. “I swear my dad looked at me differently afterward.”
I caught my dad giving me sad smiles while we were eating pie. Or maybe I was just being overly sensitive about it. Devon was okay with it, or at least he seemed to be. After having taken so long to put the pieces together, I thought for sure he’d be annoyed with me, especially for lying to him like I did. But he seemed fine.
Later, when we were cleaning up and Chelsea pried me with more questions, Devon even came to my rescue, telling her it wasn’t a big deal and to leave me alone. I doubt that will keep Chelsea away. If only.
“Why do you think he looked at you differently?”
“He probably thinks I need therapy.”
Chase chuckles again. “At least he cares. I’ve barely said two words to my dad since the funeral.”
I turn my head to the side and tilt it upward to see him looking at my ceiling. It’s the first time he’s said much of anything about his dad.
“Why do you think that is?” I ask.
I feel his shrug. “He’s not really been talking to me or Kenzie. Not more than one- or two-word sentences.”
“That … must be hard. How is Kenzie handling everything?”
“I haven’t talked to her in a few days. She’s busy planning a wedding.”
“Right,” I say. “How’s that going?”
“It’s going,” he says.
We fall into silence, only the sound of the cars on the street below my open window filling the quiet. I leave the conversation open for Chase to say more, wanting him to talk to me more about how he’s feeling. He seems so open when we talk about other things, but shuts down when we talk about his family.
“There’s a heart on your ceiling,” Chase says, pointing toward the spot near my fan.
“You see that?”
“Totally. It’s a perfect-shaped one. A rare find on a ceiling,” he says. “I’ve found a pretty good Batman shape in my room.”
I turn my head toward him again, feeling so much kinship with this man lying on my bed, his hand now rubbing lazy patterns on my arm. It’s a dumb thing, really. How many millions of people look for shapes in clouds? Certainly a ceiling with accidental patterns from a texture gun is not much different.
“There’s two-thirds of a shamrock on my bathroom wall,” I say.
Another chuckle. “I’m pretty sure I can see my grandpa’s profile in my kitchen. I sometimes say hi to it.”
This time it’s my turn to giggle. “I think I might miss you when you go to London.”
He gives my arm a squeeze. “Might?” he says.
“Well, I’ll for sure miss Oscar.”
“He’ll miss you,” Chase says. “And I’ll probably miss you. Maybe.”
“What’s going on in here?”
We both look over to see Hannah standing just inside the door of my room, taking in the sight of Chase and me on my bed. His arm around me, my body semi-snuggled up to his. We probably do look a little cozy.
“Hey, Han,” I say, using a very casual tone as if to say, Do not read into this.
She’s apparently too tired to care, because she suddenly drops her purse on the floor, in dramatic Hannah fashion, and then comes over to the bed. “Scoot,” she instructs.
Chase and I comply, and now I’m in between the two of them. It’s odd how right this feels. Like we’ve been doing this for years.
“How’s work?” Chase asks.
Hannah lets out a grunt. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“Mags told her family about me tonight,” Chase says .
“Chase,” I say, my voice a reprimand. I reach over and pinch his arm, and he wiggles it away from me.
“Wait, what?” Hannah asks. “You told them what about Chase?”
“The whole thing,” Chase says.
“I can speak for myself, you noob,” I say.
“No way. What happened? Why did you tell them?”
“Well, my dad and June are dating,” I say.
“So you thought to up the ante by telling them the truth about your texting lover?”
I pinch her arm this time. “Not lovers,” I say.
“Yeah,” Chase says. “Bummer.”
I look over at him and see a smile on his face, his eyes on the ceiling. He’s teasing, obviously. So why do I feel a warm sensation starting to swirl in my belly?
“Shut up,” I say, to him and my stomach.
I turn my head toward Hannah and give her most of the details but not everything, my need to vent gone now that I already did that with Chase.
“Wow,” she says. “That wasn’t well thought out, was it?”
Chase laughs. “No, it wasn’t.”
“Stop ganging up on me.”
“It’s really easy to fix this,” says Hannah.
“Really?” I turn my head toward her.
“Just do something even crazier … like rob a bank or something.”
“Helpful,” I say.
“If there’s one thing I know,” she says, after yawning loudly, “it’s that the Coopers get over stuff. It’s one of your talents. I wish that was a thing with my family. Halmoni still lectures me about the one time I came home past curfew when I was seventeen.”
I snort laugh and Chase chuckles next to me.
We’re silent for a bit and I stare up at the heart on my ceiling, feeling so grateful for it right now.