Elena gave him a strange smile, and James wondered if it was obvious that he was acting strangely. Could everyone see that he’d just run into his ex-wife?
“Congratulations on your party, James,” Carmen said seriously, folding her hands over her stomach. “I can’t remember the last time you had one. Then again, there’s a lot I can’t remember these days.” She wagged her eyebrows and laughed, as though she wanted to be in on the joke of her own health issues. James didn’t know what to say.
“She’s teasing you,” Elena said. “She’s trying to make everyone uncomfortable, as usual.” She swatted her mother playfully.
“Well, what other fun can I have?” Carmen asked. “I can’t drink. I can hardly eat anything fun. I have to tease people every now and again!”
“That’s fair,” James affirmed.
James led them into the living room, where he introduced them to those they didn’t know and helped Carmen fill her plate with health-approved foods. Elena snuck a lemon bar and ate it behind her mother’s back, smiling at him. James’s heart leaped. He wanted to pull her into the hallway and tell her about Bethany. No, he wanted to pull her into the hallway and kiss her for the first time. Maybe that was better.
But he didn’t want to get ahead of himself.
Soon, Gina and Steven adopted Carmen into their group on the sofa. Carmen was giving them loud and vaguely sage advice about their careers. “You have to go after what you want in life, my darlings,” she said, again sounding serious. “Who else is going to want things for you? You have to make your own meaning from everything you do!”
Elena touched James’s shoulder, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry to scare you.”
“You didn’t.” He laughed and filled his lungs.
“It’s a good party. It is,” she said, frowning. “But why do I get the sense that you’re having a bad time?”
James puffed his cheeks. “It’s a long story, honestly. And probably a boring one.”
“I’ve told you plenty of boring stories at this point,” Elena said.
“I don’t think you’ve ever said anything boring.”
Elena’s eyes glinted. Slowly, she slipped her fingers through his and guided him back to the kitchen, where a member of his crisis support group inhaled a mozzarella stick and smiled greasily. “Great party, James!” she cried before disappearing back into the party.
It was just Elena and James in the kitchen now. James felt weirdly exposed.
“Come on,” Elena urged, reaching for a glass that she filled with wine. “You want some?”
James accepted his first glass of the day and felt his shoulders slump forward. He was oddly relieved she was there. “It’s been a weird day, is all,” he said, because he couldn’t find a way to talk about Bethany. Not so soon after meeting Elena.
“I’ve also had a heck of a day,” Elena said. “A heck of a week, in fact.”
“Go on,” James said.
Elena grimaced. “It looks like my mother was chasing the same story that I’ve been chasing, which is the same story my grandmother was chasing. I can’t figure out how deep this goes. But the worst of it is, I don’t think my mother remembers.”
James was mystified. “How did you figure that out?”
“I went into her email,” Elena admitted, scrunching her nose. “I know it’s wrong. But Natalie showed me a few emails written by my mother to Natalie a few months back. It looks like she was probing into it, but she didn’t fully trust herself.”
“She knew she was sick,” James said.
Elena nodded. “I think so. It breaks my heart. I wish she had reached out to me and asked for help. In any case, it looks like she asked her editor for help, and he literally gaslighted her about it. He insisted she was losing her mind.”
James squeezed his bicep so hard that he nearly yelped. “I’m sorry. Who?”
“The editor of the paper. The one who quit recently?” Elena said.
“Sam Ellison?” James asked, his voice like a string.
It was clear that Elena sensed something off. “You know him well?”
