Mokita. Agreeing to ignore a truth, no matter how painful.
“I feel bad for this family,” she admitted softly, scrubbing Reggie behind the ears before he started whining again. “But I understand them, too. Why Eula stayed, and why her nephews left.” She said it with the weight of someone who had personal experience in the leaving. It occurred to me then—whywassomeone as competent and talented in her profession as Juliette all the way up here? Then again, why was Wykofski?
Why was I?
My chest felt tight, and I absently rubbed it. “Yeah …” And it wasn’t the avenue I wanted to go down. “Well, I hope everything works out, butspeakingof which, you never told me about your date the other week.”
At the mention of it, she perked up and grabbed my wrist. Her eyes sparkled. “Oh,Sophie, it wasamazing,” she gushed, smiling. “His name is Myke—with ay.”
“Ah. The usual spelling.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s nice. He owns his own dental office! And heaskedabout my job. Do you know how rare that is?”
“Honestly, no,” I admitted. “I haven’t dated in . . .” I counted on my fingers, though I really didn’t need to. I knew how long it had been, because the day Sanchez called me about Harrie was the day I was supposed to go out with some guy named Elliott. The date never happened, because I booked a red-eye to California that night. “Almost two years?”
“Oh, you aremuchstronger than me,” she said, nodding seriously. “And then you come all the way up here to keep that streak going! I’m impressed.”
I barked a laugh at that. “It helps when you work all the time.”
“Maybe you have the right idea,” she admitted. “Like, I don’t mind meeting people online, right? But whatever happened to the old-fashioned way of finding a date? In a book-store with someone who looks like a young Billy Crystal or Tom Hanks?” Sighing wistfully, she looked down at Reggie slobbering all over the hem of her pencil skirt and said, “You’re the only good boy in this entire town.”
“Myke with aycould be a contender,” I reminded her.
She laughed. “He could, couldn’t he? I like the idea. I hope he asks me on another date.”
“He hasn’t yet?”
Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “He’s busy, you know.”
“Yes, fighting cavities,” I deadpanned.
“I’m busy, too,” she added.
Once upon a time, Harrie would have rolled her eyes and said, “Stop making excuses for other people. They can make those themselves.”
But I didn’t know Juliette well enough to say that, and besides, shedidhave a point. She was very busy with the bicentennial and the influx of interview requests about Eula’s retirement. Her knees kept bumping up and down anxiously like she couldn’t quite sit still. Too much to do, too little time.
“But if he doesn’t text me by the weekend, I think I’ll follow up with—oh shoot,” she added as her phone vibrated in her lap. She looked at the notification and paled. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“Sorry, buddy,” she said, pushing Reggie off her lap and rubbing the drool away as she stood. “I have to go.BetterHomes and Gardenswants to schedule an interview about the bicentennial.”
“Keep me updated on Myke with ay. Maybe he’ll pull through for us.”
She gave it a laugh. It sounded like a chime. “You should try to date, even if it’s bad. It’ll be a good story at least. My one rule isnomusicians, and I promise you don’t want to know why.”
“I’ll think about it,” I replied, and she made a motion to let me know that she was watching as she gathered her trash.
“And while you’re thinking, if you remember you have a contact in an orchestra, let me know.”
“I don’t think I do, but I’ll ask around.”
“Teamwork makes the dream work!” she declared, and she hurried off to the house to go book that interview. She reminded me of a hummingbird—flitting about, sweet and fleeting. Myke with aydidn’t know what he had. Most people didn’t, I had come to discover, until they lost it. You got so used to having something—to itbeingthere—that when it no longer was you kicked yourself for wondering why you hadn’t spent more time talking with them, and sharing stories, and committing them to memory.
Hindsight was always sharp and bitter when you finally used it.
21
