I do that walk across the gravel, and I almost pull it off, except that a preschool at rest time is the quietest place on earth and the door has a hinge with opinions. It announces me like a town crier. Lily looks up from the rocking chair in the fish-tank glow, takes in my face, and her whole body goes alert, like a pointer scenting a downed bird.
I sit on the story-time stool, which puts my knees somewhere around my ears, and stare at the carpet.
She lets me have exactly one minute of it.
“What did you do.”
“Nothing.”
“Josie.”
“I handled it.”
“Oh no,” she says, with relish. “Tell me everything.”
“There's nothing to tell. Gerald's real, by the way. You were right. It's Gerald.”
“It'sgerald?” she whisper-screams.
Across the room, Atlas stirs on his mat, smacks his lips, goes back under. We freeze like burglars until his breathing evens out.
“Accountant. Pine Valley. His own firm, Lily. His own firm.”
“Of course it's his own firm.” She wheels her chair closer, fish-tank light sliding across her face. “Okay. So she ambushed you, you said no thank you, you held the line. Right?”
I look at the fish.
“Josie. Right?”
The fish looks back at me with more sympathy than I'm about to get from anyone else in this room.
“I told her I have a pack.”
Lily's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. Her hand comes up slowly to cover it, and above her fingers her eyes have gone wide and bright and thrilled, which is the worst part, because that's not concern. That's a woman watching her favorite show get renewed.
“You don't have a pack,” she says, into her hand.
“I'm aware.”
“You can't lie. You physically cannot lie. You told me you liked my bangs last year and then apologized about it for two days.”
“The bangs were a lot, Lily.”
“Iknowthe bangs were a lot, that's not the point.” Atlas stirs again. We freeze again. She drops to a whisper so furious it's almost ultrasonic. “What exactly did you say. Words. In order.”
So I tell her. The voice. The ambush. Sandra from book club. The no pressure. The part where my mother deployed Cara like a closing argument. And then the part where the worry drained out of her voice for the first time in living memory, and the part where she cried, and the part where I stood in a gravel lot and told her my pack couldn't wait to meet everyone.
Lily listens the way she listens to the kids' wilder stories, nodding along, completely present, taking in every detail. When I finish, she sits back, and the fish tank burbles, and twelve children breathe in the dark.
“Your mom thinks you have three alphas,” she says slowly. “Coming to the reunion. In a month.”
“Four weeks.”
“Josie.”
“I counted on the way in.”
“And she's told people.”
