“Season two.”
If Lacy is impressed by Cece’s recall, she hides it well. “I mean, I know they’re gonna get back together. I’ve seen the show, like, fifty times, but it’s still upsetting. They’re meant for each other.”
Cece smiles, remembering when she used to believe in things like soulmates.
“What was it like,” Lacy asks, “when the show first came out?”
Buoyed by the girl’s interest, Cece tells her how it was a massive hit, how her friends used to argue at their lockers and in their homerooms about who was hotter, Ryan or Seth, about how Marissa’s death went viral before going viral was a thing.
“Did people really freak out?”
“It was all anyone could talk about.”
“Zoe and I watch all the episodes together. It’s like our thing. But we’ve had to do it over the phone this summer, since I started coming down here,” Lacy says, her voice slipping from exuberant to distant.
Cece says nothing, does nothing, for fear of making a misstep and setting the girl off.
“My parents are fighting again,” Lacy says.
Cece tries to arrange her face. “Adults have disagreements all the time. It’s completely normal.”
“Did your parents fight when you were a kid?”
“Like, have big arguments?”
“You know,” Lacy says, toying with her headphones, “lots of yelling. Plates and glasses always getting broken.”
Cece should say yes, yes her parents fought all the time, so as not to scare the girl, but then again, shouldn’t Lacy know this sort of thing isn’t normal? She remembers what Lorraine told her about the police outside Morgan’s home that one winter evening. Did he pose a threat to Lacy? Is his wife trying to get full custody? Because she fears for her daughter’s safety? “Lacy,” Cece says, her voice raspy and low, “how bad is your father’s temper? Is he violent?”
Lacy stares at Cece, dumbfounded. Then she doubles over and laughs. “That’s a good one,” she says between gasps for breath. “My dad doesn’t even let me kill the ants that come into our kitchen. He makes me take them outside. No…it was always my mom back then. Dad would do some tiny thing or another, and next thing I knew, they’d be yelling. Sure, he yelled, but she was always the one who started breaking things and threateningto call the cops. Then, last winter, when she was dropping me off, they got into it again. Bad. Just like old times, and she threatened to call the cops, and then she actually did it. I thought she was bluffing, but they showed up, lights flashing, hands on their belts, like they expected my dad to put up a fight or something. Eventually they ended up leaving because my dad hadn’t really done anything.”
“But you like staying with your mom.”
Lacy gives her signature shrug. “I like being near my friends. And besides that one big blowup, my parents really don’t fight anymore. Now they just sort of stare at each other.”
Cece feels foolish. She’d believed the neighborhood gossip about Morgan from Lorraine. And why? Because he drove a rusty pickup truck and worked down at the boatyard? Because a man his size surely enjoyed throwing his weight around? If Cece’s being honest, wasn’t the idea of Morgan having a brush with the law part of his initial appeal? The risk, the mystery—she’d wanted it. And now? Now she’s been embarrassed by a thirteen-year-old girl. A girl who seems to have a far better understanding of the world than her. If Cece’s instincts and perceptions are this flawed, what else is she getting wrong?
“Let’s go somewhere,” Cece says, desperate to change the subject for her own sake.
“It’s, like, seven in morning.”
“How about the supermarket?”
“Seriously?”
“Come on. It’ll be nice to get out of the house.”
Lacy rolls her eyes but doesn’t protest, which Cece takes as a win.
Perusing the aislesof ShopRite, Cece does her best to act as if nothing is amiss, as if Morgan didn’t just rush off to Rhode Island and leave Lacy in her care. Sure, the girl’s been warming up to her, but Cece feels wholly incapable of looking after a teenager. Or is it adolescent? She doesn’t now the correct terminology, and even though Wynonna’s kids have years to go before reaching the girl’s age, Cece has half a mind to call her for advice. How does one entertain a thirteen-year-old? Cece thinks back to her own childhood even while recognizing the unhelpfulness of the exercise. Being the bookish and goal-oriented girl she was, Cece’s summer before high school had been filled with sleepaway camp (a necessary social adventure), reading all the required books for her history and English courses ahead of time, and attending a young scholars program for promising STEM students at Princeton (her idea, not her parents’). No—nothing from her youth would be helpful in relating to Lacy. Even still, Cece hopes there might be something she can do for the girl: distraction or comradery. Witnessing her own parents argue and fight, their marriage fracturing around her, has been disquieting and uncanny at Cece’s age. She struggles to fathom how gutted and empty she’d feel if she knew her parents’ marriage was beyond repair at the fragile age of thirteen.
Life—Cece finds herself begrudgingly admitting—is messy, full of contradiction and risk, but children are an entirely different proposition. She’s avoided the conversation completely since getting back together with Jonathan. The prospect of marriage and a house in the suburbs is something she’s come around to—she wants those things; she wants stability and permanency. As for the bringing of life into this world—Cece thinks she ought to figure out her own life first.
With Lacy silent and sullen, whatever inroads Cece had made earlier seem to have washed out. They’re in the bakery section, and Cece’s doing her best not to keep checking on Lacy, who’s hanging back a few feet, like she’d rather be left behind than risk association.
“Donut?” Cece says, opening up the flimsy plastic pastry case. Maybe she can bribe the girl with sweets. It’s not the worst idea she’s had. “We can eat them while we shop.”
Lacy observes Cece like she’s a statue in a museum. “Before we pay for them?”
