Hallie read the message. Then reread it again. She still didn’t understand.
Hallie Thatcher - 6:35 p.m.
You gave them a what?
Brynn Fitzpatrick - 6:35 p.m.
A feelings wheel. For them to identify their emotions to better navigate them. >>
Squinting, Hallie looked down at the photo that had come through. It hada lotgoing on. Big emotions like “angry” and “fearful” and “happy” and “sad” were written in the center, and then there were offshoots that radiated outward into more and more descriptive language to dig into those feelings and break them down further.
Well, shit. No one would ever accuse Brynn of not giving this temp job her one hundred percent.
Hallie Thatcher - 6:37 p.m.
Did it work?
Long, long minutes passed as she waited for a response, but it seemed like Brynn was consistently typing. This oughta be good.
Brynn Fitzpatrick - 6:43 p.m.
Overall, I think it was very productive. Initially, we identified that Candace felt bad and Greg felt sad. Broad emotions. Once we dug in, we realized that Candace felt bad because she was stressed, and as a result, she felt out of control. And Greg felt sad because he felt hurt and was ultimately disappointed.
The root cause, we identified, was that Greg has been playing local shows with his band, but they don’t start until after eleven p.m. Candace has been trying to go to them, but since her shift starts so early, she’s had to miss the last few.
Therefore, Greg felt disappointed that Candace wasn’t showing up for him, but he didn’t realize that she was feeling so overwhelmed with the change to her schedule.
Hallie stared at her phone, awestruck.
“Dinner’s ready,” her mom called from the kitchen.
God, what she wouldn’t give to call Brynn right now and have her walk Hallie through whatever had played out between the three of them earlier today. Word for word, preferably.
But she knew that, annoyingly, and in a way that made no sense—since most of the time, it didn’t seem like her family cared whether she was around or not—her absence at dinner would be duly noted and commented on for the first few minutes of the meal.
Hallie Thatcher - 6:45 p.m.
Brynn, this is… incredible. I want to discuss this in more detail, but we’re about to eat dinner.
She sent another text through before she overthought it. Positive praise could go a long way, especially since she knew that Brynn was hesitant about her people skills.
Hallie Thatcher - 6:45 p.m.
This is great, though. Really amazing.
Before she gave into the temptation to hide away in the bathroom for a few minutes to keep talking to Brynn, she tucked her phone into her pocket and wandered over to the dining room table.
A decadent spread, unlike anything her mom had prepared when she’d been growing up, covered the table. Once Mason had gone to college, Hallie had mostly taken care of dinner on her own, but even when he still lived at home, this was still so far from the buffet-style-at-the-kitchen-counter situation that was a staple of her childhood that she wanted to laugh. All the different items were placed on fancy pot holders, acting as the meal’s centerpiece.
And then she clocked the creamy mushroom risotto, which she hadn’t realized was the main dish for dinner. Maybe she would have realized the dairy-rich entree was the main course, except that when she’d tried to help earlier, she’d been shooed to the far end of the kitchen island so that she hadn’tbeen in the way.
Hallie took her seat and looked at the other options: a side salad that looked relatively safe, along with roasted asparagus. Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, the asparagus looked like it’d been generously topped with parmesan, too.
She was only here for three more days, she reminded herself as she waited for the salad to be passed to her. By the time the wooden bowl was in her hands, there was enough left that she could just make a small side salad.
Guess she’d be pilfering the twins Cheerios later, which was about the only perk to sleeping so close to the kitchen.
The twins were seated in high chairs at one of the corners, with her mom next to Henry and Claire next to Elliot. Mason and her dad were seated across from her, where she clocked that they were still able to watch the game, which had at least been muted.
