Elliot burst out laughing. “I guess you don’t remember the thousands of zits I had on my face. Or how nervous I was to talk in class.”
“You seemed too cool to talk in class,” Ivy told him. “Like you couldn’t be bothered.”
“Interesting.”
Ivy took a breath. “What about me? What did you think?”
Elliot spread his hands across the table and scrutinized her face, as though projecting them both back to their senior year of high school. She guessed he’d say something like he barely remembered her, to be honest.
But instead, he said, “You and Daniel seemed really in love. It seemed like you didn’t need anyone else. I remember wondering if your relationship was how all relationships were supposed to go. Shelly and I used to fight a lot. She’d cry, and I’d punch the steering wheel of my car, and then we’d make out and do it all over again. It was tumultuous. In retrospect, I can’t believe I followed her to MIT and married her.”
“Wow.” Ivy was stunned. After everything she and Daniel had been through, she couldn’t believe that anyone had ever thought them to be a loving couple.
“I thought you were cute, too,” Elliot said, smiling again. “But I guessed you didn’t want me to talk to you.”
“What would you have said?” she asked, marveling at this other reality wherein Elliot was too frightened to talk to her. She’d been nothing back then, meek and silly.
“I was never creative enough to come up with anything to say,” he said.
Ivy hesitated. “You’re creative enough now, I guess.”
“I like to think I do okay.” Elliot shrugged.
That night, Ivy floated back home, feeling within herself a sense of joy that she’d never experienced. When she entered the house, she called out for Tyler but soon realized he wasn’t there, just as he hadn’t been when she’d returned home all week. Fear shot through her stomach and entered her heart. But she called him on the phone and got him on the third ring.
“Hey.” His voice was breathy and low. “I’m on my way back.”
It was then that Ivy felt that something was really wrong with her son, that he was hiding something. But when she asked where he was, he told her to stop worrying and that he’d be home soon. He hung up and left her in the living room's darkness, her ears perked for the first signs that he was coming home.
Chapter Sixteen
The following morning, Ivy stood in the kitchen of her place with a mug of coffee and watched as her only son traipsed through the snow and off to school. Right before he turned the corner, he ripped off the hat she’d insisted he put on before he left and shook his head so that his dark hair spilled over his ears. She sighed and glanced at the thermometer: 18 degrees Fahrenheit. She prayed he wouldn’t get sick. Last night, when he’d finally returned home from wherever he was, he’d bolted up the staircase and slammed his door behind him, leaving Ivy with a strange feeling of loss.
How could she get through to him?
Just then, Celia’s car pulled up in front of the eco-lodge. Celia got out and sped up the walkway, jangling her keys. Ivy felt a wonderful warmth flowing through her. It was a brand-new thing, the idea that she could go talk to her older sister about what was going wrong in her life. But when she pulled on her boat, rushed through the snow, and arrived in the eco-lodge's foyer, Celia welcomed her with open arms, nutty coffee, and freshly baked scones by the in-house chef. They sat in one of the breakfast nooks that Elliot had crafted, watching as snow flitted past the window.
“I can’t help but feel like he’s drifting further and further away from me,” Ivy said of Tyler.
“Does he know you feel this way?” Celia asked.
Ivy shook her head. “I don’t know how to be so earnest. I don’t know how to say any of it aloud.”
“You’ve been practicing with Lily, haven’t you?” Celia tore a crumb from her scone and set it on her tongue. “Saying what you mean? Telling each other what’s on your mind?”
“Miraculously, yes.” And she’d been doing it with Elliot, as well, although she wasn’t ready to share that news with Celia yet.
“You don’t think Tyler can handle that side of you?”
Ivy closed her eyes and considered Tyler’s face, his sharp jawline, his dark eyes. It was impossible to tell Celia how similar Tyler was to his father and what that sometimes did to her heart and mind.
“Maybe you should have a dinner date with him,” Celia suggested. “Sit him down and ask him about everything you and Lily have been talking about lately. Ask him about his school, his dreams, and how he envisions his life. I think teenagers want to be taken seriously just as desperately as adults do. Maybe even more. They want to be able to prove themselves.”
Ivy realized her sister was right.
Right there in the breakfast nook, Ivy pulled out her phone and texted her son with the idea to meet for dinner tonight.
IVY: I was thinking we could try out that new taco place off Washington Ave. Apparently, they have really good fish tacos.
