“Great. Got any ideas?”
“I don’t know, Freddie,” George said with a sigh. “You were going to start a nonprofit back in college, right? Do that.”
Huh. The idea landed in Freddie’s brain like a bomb, detonating and clearing out all the cobwebs.
“That’s not a bad idea.”
George shrugged. “There’s no money in it, but on the bright side, you won’t have to court another job offer in Midtown again.”
“Thank God,” Freddie murmured, letting his head fall back against the headrest.
Freddie didn’t head back to the Uppercross. His emotions were still too raw and the idea for a nonprofit was fizzing in his brain, shooting from one possibility to the next too fast for him to nail down. So he did what he always had to when he needed to untether his brain—let it roam and work until it came up with a plan: He went to Queens.
By lunchtime he was helping his mother in the garden like he had for so many years. Everything had been moved into her small greenhouse near the garage, and together they repotted seedlings, debating whether to plant spinach again next summer. Then he went to the basement, where his dad still had Bertha going, churning out oregano and parsley year-round.
It was good to have his hands in dirt again, back where it all started. His body went into autopilot while his brain examined every angle for his nonprofit, coming up with idea after idea until he finally had to head upstairs to grab one of his dad’s small reporter’s notebooks to jot them down.
An hour later, he was sitting in his parents’ living room, the Jetsgame on TV and a beer in his hand while he filled page after page, mapping out the first steps for his charity. He only paused when his dad shuffled around the corner in his pajamas and carrying a beer of his own.
“What’s the score?” he asked.
“Nineteen–three, Rams,” Freddie answered grimly.
“Goddamn it.” Fred Sr. landed heavily in the recliner beside the sofa. “So, what are you still doing out here? Did your mother find that Santa in the basement?”
“No. I just needed a change of scenery,” Freddie replied, tapping his pen against his leg. “Where’s Sophie?”
“At the shop,” his father replied, waving a hand toward the front door and, somewhere beyond it, Manhattan. “The launch party is tomorrow so she’s working on some last-minute details.”
Freddie nodded, even as the reminder of the launch party triggered a shot of anxiety. “Are you and Mom going?”
His father threw him an incredulous glare. “We don’t go into the city after dark. You know that. We’ll go in during normal business hours. You kids have fun.”
The Jets turned the ball over with ten seconds left in the quarter and Fred Sr. grumbled to himself as the game went to commercial.
“Your sister has been singing Anne’s praises for the past few weeks,” his father said after a moment. “Sounds like she did a real bang-up job with all the accounting.”
“Yeah.”
“And Sophie asked her to be her partner?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you two break up again?”
Freddie’s head fell back. “Dad, can we not—”
“Hey, just asking,” his father said, holding up his hands in mock surrender.
The game returned, and they sat in silence as the Jets were intercepted, as the Rams missed a field goal. Freddie tried to watch, to get lost in the game and forget everything else, but instead, everything else felt like it was going to swallow him whole. He had to say it, hash it out, or he would end up exactly where he was eight years ago, broken and confused and having no idea what to do with it.
“I’m still in love with her, Dad,” he finally said.
He didn’t look surprised. If anything, a new tinge of sadness swelled in his eyes. “Does she know that?”
