“Bea—”
“I’m not done.” She picked up the tea. Took a sip. Made a face—Tyler’s tea was truly terrible—but held onto the mug becauseshe needed something warm in her hands. “I’ve been ‘okay’ about this for weeks. I’ve been ‘processing.’ I’ve been watching my mother fall for someone and telling myself it was fine and adjusting and beingmatureabout it because that’s what you do when you’re sixteen and your mom hasn’t dated anyone in your entire life and suddenly there’s a man with a legal pad at the counter.”
Tyler leaned forward in the armchair. “Bea.”
She looked at him.
“I get it,” he said.
“You don’t?—”
“I do. I spent three weeks terrified that dating Lindsey would make Stella feel like she wasn’t enough.” He glanced at Stella. “I didn’t even ask her out until she basically ordered me to.”
“I literally told him he had to,” Stella confirmed.
“The point is—” Tyler rubbed the back of his neck. “The point is I was scared too. That adding someone would mean taking something away. That Stella would look at Lindsey and think I was replacing—something. The life we’d built.”
“Did she?” Bea asked.
“I pushed him to do it,” Stella said. “Because I could see he needed it. He was happier. Calmer. He’d been alone for sixteen years and he didn’t have to be anymore.” She pulled her feet up on the couch. “But that’s different.”
“How?”
“I chose it. I saw it coming and I pushed for it.” Stella looked at Bea. “You didn’t get to choose. Anna just—did it.”
“Right. Exactly,” Bea said to Tyler. The words came out raw. “My mom is the only parent I’ve got who shows up every day. My dad left before I could remember and my mom stayed and it’s beenus. Me and Mom. For sixteen years. And now she’s?—”
Her voice broke. Not dramatically—a hairline crack, the sound of something that had been held too tight for too long finally letting go.
Tyler got up from the armchair, crossed to the couch, and sat on Bea’s other side. He didn’t hug her—Tyler wasn’t a hugger usually—but he put his hand on her shoulder and left it there.
“She’s not leaving,” Tyler said. “Anna doesn’t leave. That’s literally the thing about Anna.”
“I know.”
“She’s not replacing you. She’s not choosing him over you.”
“I know.” Bea pressed the heel of her hand against her eye. “I know all of this. I know it in my head. I know she deserves to be happy. I know Michael is—whatever he is. Thorough. Reliable. He bought aneasel, for goodness sake.” She laughed, which was worse than crying because it was mixed with everything else. “I just wanted her to ask me first.”
The room was quiet. Tyler’s hand on Bea’s shoulder. Stella on the other side. Three people on a couch in a small bungalow, two of them sixteen and one of them forty, all trying to figure out the same thing—what happens when the people you love change the shape of the life you built together.
“She should have told you,” Stella said.
“Yeah.”
“She was probably scared.”
“I know.”
“She’s probably standing in the kitchen right now feeling terrible.”
“Good.” Bea took another sip of Tyler’s awful tea. “This is the worst tea I’ve ever had.”
“I know,” Tyler said. “I’m sorry about the tea.”
“You should be. This is a crime against beverages.”
“In my defense, I’m better at eggs.”
