“If you have kids, you won’t be a mom like that,” I told Willow.
“You won’t be, either. And I’ll be the Fun Girl aunt,” she promised, which made me think about kids and parents—hers, mine, and also Everett’s. I thought about that more as I lay in bed, after he had texted me a good night, and I came to a conclusion. If he really wanted to adopt his stepson, then I was going all-in to help him and help that little boy. I also knew what it was like to have a mother and father who, as my sister had said, sucked. So did Everett, but I didn’t believe he would carry that over in how he parented.
He had gotten three tickets for the game, so I saw Willow again when she and Boyd came to pick me up the next morning. And she was at the wheel. She waved as she pulled in and she nearly hit the balsam fir next to the driveway. Then she rolled down the window. “I wanted to surprise you!” she called. “I got my permit—”
“Don’t take your foot off the brake! Put it in park!” Boyd yelled, and it ended up that he wanted to drive us to the stadium himself. “The traffic will make you anxious,” he said to Willow,but he was the one who was sweating, and the temperature this morning was hovering in the forties. That was why I’d brought extra blankets but I didn’t suggest that she needed to have her wheelchair or another mobility aid. We would park close to the doors and she could make that decision for herself, as an adult. I kept my mouth shut.
My sister didn’t. She talked for most of the way to the game and I kept looking over at Boyd, who was smiling and not telling her to shut up like my mom used to do. Then I realized that they were talking about me.
“It’s perfect for her,” Willow was saying. “She’ll have everything.”
“Baby, we only use that in the summer. There’s no insulation in the walls and no indoor plumbing. Zoey can’t live there.”
“Excuse me?” I interrupted. “I’m not moving, especially to a place without running water.”
“Don’t be picky,” she said. “If you’re in the cabin, we’ll be close to each other again. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Except for the lack of electricity, and the fact that it’s not a cabin. It’s a shanty where we clean our fish,” her boyfriend said. “Nobody can live there.” For once, he and I were on the same side.
“I’m not moving from where I am,” I informed them both. “At least, not right away.”
She muttered something about people not listening to good advice, which made him laugh and even I had to smile. I stoppedthat when Boyd spoke up again. “All Zoey used to do was boss you around and drive you crazy,” he told her.
“Because she loves me so much,” she answered. “Like how I made you wear pants today instead of shorts.”
“I make you brake early and stop at red lights,” he said. “Yeah, I guess that’s love.”
“What if someone is always concerned about empty roads?” I asked them. “What if he did things like tell you to avoid a broken board in a flight of stairs and then watch to make sure that you did? What if he got upset when you were worried, and he wanted to have your mom arrested for stealing your money?” When I thought about it, there were a lot of examples where he seemed to be looking out for me.
“Who are we talking about, Everett Ford? I thought he was into you all along,” Boyd said. “Why the hell else would he have driven out to pick up Willow that night I got arrested?”
“Detained,” she reminded him.
“He wants you to come to all his games. He went over to that apartment and moved you out and into his own house,” he continued.
“He made excuses to talk to her, too,” Willow added. “He told her some story about trying to get custody of a kid he doesn’t even know. It’s like when that guy in the band kept asking you over to his house and you thought he just wanted to hang out and watch movies,” she said to me. “I knew that he liked you. Why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t Everett Ford?”
“What? Now you’re on his side?” I asked.
“If he breaks your heart, I’ll still kill him,” she responded.
“He didn’t make up a story about a kid. Look,” I said, and I showed her some of what Eris had posted lately. There were a lot of pictures of her with her son, but they were different from before. In one, he sat on her lap and they were both laughing, and the woman who was his nanny was next to them and laughing as well. I looked at that for a while, because it seemed like genuine happiness. There were still posts of her alone (mostly nude), and others promoting a new movie she was in—the sequel to the one about the demons in the private school. But most of them were of him, or of the two of them together.
“Why does Everett want that kid?” my sister asked.
“Because he thought that his ex-wife was going to do a bad job of raising him. He thought that she didn’t love him.”
“They look ok,” she told me. “Social media’s a lie, though.”
“Is that right?” Boyd asked her. “You believe it.” She told him to be quiet. “Half of the things people say about the Woodsmen is crap,” he continued. “Probably more than half.”
“There’s stuff about you, Zo,” she said. “There’s a picture of you talking to Everett at a coffee shop and you look so pretty. Your hair is really good.” She turned around to check me now, and nodded her approval.
Due to our parking pass, we got into the stadium without much trouble, and due to our sideline pass, we were able to go down on the field and get close to the players. We were close to Everett,which was all that I cared about, and he came over to talk for a minute. “Hi,” he told my sister and Boyd, and he looked at me and grinned. “Hi, Zoey.”
He stepped closer to me and I thought he might kiss me—and then he did, and when we broke apart, we were both smiling.
“Are you happy because you’re in the chill zone?” I asked.
