“We’re a hearty people.” She came over, lifting the top up. “I actually remember Grandma using this, once or twice.”
I wrote,Guitaron my pad, then set it to one side. Next wasDollhouse with furniture. Then:Buckets, various.
“Did I hear something about raccoons?” Liz said as she came up the stairs. “If they’re in the walls, we have a problem.”
“We found the dollhouse!” Anne told her. “And the little cakes!”
“Oh, how fun!” Liz exclaimed. “Remember how much Clark loved those tea parties?”
Clark sighed.
“What’s over there, Finley?” Liz glanced over at me. “Finding anything good?”
“There’s a guitar,” I said.
“Do you play?”
“No. But Colin does.”
I said this so easily. It was as if another mouth was forming the words. Anne turned, looking at me. “Who’s Colin?”
“My boyfriend,” I said. “I mean… ex.”
Anne gave me a sympathetic look. “This is recent?”
“Yesterday.”
She gasped. A true, sudden-intake-of-breath, hand-to-mouth expression of shock. “Oh my God! Are you okay?”
I blinked. “I—”
Immediately, she plopped down beside me, pulling me in for a hug. It was so unexpectedly kind, I felt myself start to get sobby. “It’s okay. I am here for you. How long were you together?”
“Two years,” I whispered into her collarbone.
“You poor thing!” She squeezed me tighter. “What happened?”
And then, somehow, I was telling her all of it. There under the eaves, in the dusty dark. New school. Idaho. The Frisbee Fam. StuCo. All our plans, up until this week and his Disney cruise and the girl in the square from Speculator. Anne increased the pressure of her hug each time the story worsened. By the time I finished, she was holding on so tight, I could barely breathe.
“It’s going to be okay.” Finally, she pulled back, brushing some hair from my face. “He’ll come to his senses. You just have to be patient.”
I was surprised. Other than my wild, hoping heart, no one had suggested that all this might, in fact, be temporary. “You think?”
Slap!I looked over: This time it was Ben, with a rolled-up magazine, taking out a wasp.
“Yes,” she said, emphatically. “I know, in fact. Jonathan andI went through the same thing at the two-year mark. So did Mom and Dad.”
“It’s true,” Liz called out.
“Sonormal,” Anne assured me. “I read a whole book about it. It’s like a test.”
Well, I was good at those, at least. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “First there’s the infatuation, right? The wild crushing, all that. Next is the building of the connection. But that isalwaysfollowed by one person having the natural instinct to pull away. It’s, like, a mastodon thing.”
“Mastodon?” Ben said. “You mean like the animal?”
“Primal,”Anne clarified. “He can’t help himself.”
