Lacey looked up, hand flying to her chest. “Tessa?”
Tessa stood in the doorway, sunglasses pushed up on her head, hair pulled back in a low ponytail that looked hastily done. She was wearing linen pants and a loose white tank that had seen better days. She looked…off. Not her usual bright, capable self.
“What are you doing here?” Lacey asked automatically. “Did you—” She glanced past her into the entryway. “Did you bring Olive to work?”
Tessa’s mouth twitched, and for a second Lacey thought she might actually laugh.
“No,” she said. “She’s…gone.”
She didn’t say it dramatically, just flat and factual.
“Gone…where?”
Tessa crossed the room and folded into the chair across from Lacey, dropping her bag at her feet like she didn’t care where it landed. She braced her elbows on the table and leaned forward, scrubbing her face with both hands.
“With her mother,” she said.
“Oh, okay. I think. You don’t look great, Tess.”
“I am a wreck,” she murmured, her face in her hands. “Just so you know. Absolute, full-blown mess.”
Lacey stared at her, the Gilson anniversary event disappearing entirely from her brain.
“I mean—I knew you liked her, but…” Lacey proceeded carefully. “I thought it was just a babysitting thing.”
Tessa dropped her hands and looked up, eyes tired and unguarded. “So did I.” She let out a breath that sounded like it had been stuck in her chest for days. “It was supposed to be that. Temporary. It was my brilliant idea to help Dusty’s struggling patient.”
“And…”
“And then somehow, without me noticing when it happened, she became…mine.”
Lacey felt something in her chest tilt. “Yours? How?”
“I have no clue.” Tessa laughed, short and humorless. “But I knew her routines—no, no. Icreatedher routines. I read to her, bathed her, shell-hunted with her. I knew her tastes, her cares, her fears, her little…soul.” She let out a grunt. “And it hurt to let her go.”
Lacey didn’t know what to say to that. She’d never seen Tessa this stripped of polish or humor.
“How did that happen?” Lacey asked quietly.
Tessa stared at the table, fingers tracing an invisible line in the wood.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the thing. I don’t know when it crossed from a favor to…love. It just did.”
She looked up then, gaze locking onto Lacey’s face with an intensity that made her sit back slightly.
“Listen to me,” Tessa said. “And I know you didn’t ask for this advice, but I’m giving it to you anyway.”
Lacey blinked. “Okay…”
“Do not make the mistakes I’ve made,” Tessa said, her voice sharp and urgent. “Do not convince yourself that freedom is the same thing as fulfillment. Or that fun matters more than meaning. Or that work will hold you when everything else falls apart.”
Lacey opened her mouth, then closed it again.
Tessa barreled on. “I built a great life. I did. I traveled. I had a very successful and fun career. I had control. And it all felt impressive and shiny and safe until suddenly it didn’t.”
Lacey didn’t speak, but stared at her friend and mentor, who pressed her hand to her chest as if it hurt.
“And then a two-year-old with a weakness for blueberries and kind kangaroos looked at me like I was her everything, and my whole life suddenly rearranged itself.”
