I laugh, remembering how naive I had been to think two scrappy kids were corporate bigwigs. That was so like me then, though. To believe that everyone other than me had some secret well of power and authority that I could never tap into myself. Eventually, I discovered that power isn’t bestowed by a magic elixir: It’s earned through the choices you make.
“She’s been really good to Gracie.” Reid gives Gracie another look, suffused with a meaning only she could understand. “Basically helped me raise her.”
“Childless rich aunts make good surrogate moms,” Gracie deadpans.
I may not know Gracie, but I do know when a kid is trying to hide their pain with humor. Emme did it duringthe bullying years and still does it, sometimes, in regards to James and me.
Reid doesn’t interject with anything about Gracie’s actual mother, which also gives context to his bare left ring finger. I don’t know how she might figure here, but the explanation can’t be easy.
Reid clears his throat, like he knows he’s gone too far, then smoothly changes the subject.
“Emme, what’d you think of the show? Are you a Jeff Buckley fan too?”
Emme’s been mostly quiet, absorbed in pretending to study the menu—I know she’s getting the seitan parmigiana, but she’s putting on a good show—and now she brightens, sitting forward in her seat. “I loved it,” she said. “The way Ray Bull made ‘Mojo Pin’ sound like an Elton John piano ballad? Genius. It gave me chills.”
“I agree,” Reid says. “I don’t know if they’d rescind my legit card for saying this, but that cover might be better than the original.Mightbe.”
“Don’t saylegit card,” Gracie says. “And don’t blaspheme my namesake.”
Gracie.As inGrace, Jeff Buckley’s only studio album. Reid notices my delayed epiphany.
“Her mother’s favorite album,” he explains. “Mine too. But I think you already knew that.”
When he turns his attention back to Gracie, I use the opportunity to study him a little more closely. The way he sits back against the booth, an ankle thrown easily over a knee; how his T-shirt—the rumpled, tissue-thin materialthat is the calling card of a certain egregiously expensive basics brand—highlights his broad chest and shoulders.
Again and again, I’m struck with a sense of unreality. This is Reid, exactly as I knew him, and he is also a different person entirely, with a daunting vault of memories and experiences that are completely hidden from me.
And I wonder whether he’s considering me the same way.
But I keep shaking off the existential crisis to enjoy our conversation, which starts to pick up once our wine and food arrive. When the topic turns to last month’s Met Gala red carpet, Gracie and Emme even begin to address each other directly. Phoebe Bridgers’s Tory Burch look was a mutual favorite. So was Doja Cat’s campy glam kitty costume.
At one point, in the midst of talk about the potential schools the girls are each interested in (Gracie, who’s a rising senior, wants to go into premed), Gracie interrupts herself.
“Hang on,” she says. She points that razor-sharp nail at me. A silver bow charm dangles off the tip. “You said you know Aunt Cat?”
“I did.” I mentally attempt to retrace the conversation and remember what I revealed. We haven’t been talking about Cat since we sat down. Gracie must have been turning this over in her mind since then. Did I reveal something I shouldn’t have or cross a line I didn’t know existed?
Then Gracie swings her finger at her dad. “And yousaidthatJeff Buckley show?” He nods. Gracie turns back to me. “You were there?”
I nod. “Sin-é, 1993. That’s where your dad and I met.” Maybe I’ve had too much wine, but now I give Reid a brazen, challenging look. “Caught him by the coattails before he left New York.”
Reid laughs, low in his throat. “Sure did.”
Gracie nods her head slowly. Then she drops her napkin on the table and stands. Abruptly, she says, “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Emme, can you show me where it is?”
Emme, midbite, gives her a look likeMe? Now?
Gracie arches a perfectly groomed eyebrow.Now. You.
I’m just as confused as Emme is—clearly, Gracie is up to something. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m slightly afraid of what that might be.
But with the girls gone, the energy shifts. It is just the two of us, for the first time in twenty years. Reid’s shoulders drop a few inches. I smooth a hand through my hair. In the newfound quiet, a sense of intimacy blooms between us, like we can assume a freedom of conversation unbound by a duty to protect our children’s emotions. Be one person talking to another person, with no agenda other than connection.
Now Reid gestures to my camera, occupying the space between me and Emme on our side of the booth like a mechanical, alien baby. “Glad to see your minor won out.”
I laugh. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I also remember we got you that five-hundred-pound Shakespeare collection for one of your lit classes. Prettysure carrying that thing back to your place permanently fucked up my shoulder.”
