After losing her job and her girlfriend, it's time for Annie Abraham to admit defeat and move back in with her parents. She has hardly been back to her tiny Montana hometown since the unforgettable summer before her senior year of college, when she...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I cry the whole way home. Ruth can't get any sense out of me. She keeps asking what happened and I can't persuade the words to the tip of my tongue. I'm more than overwhelmed, more than overstimulated, and I think of Otto when my brain provides the words: this is a higher echelon of shit.
When we get to my house, she follows me to the door and takes the key out of my hand when I can't get it to work. She lets us in and she says, "I'm not leaving you like this, Laurel."
I drop onto the sofa. She disappears into the kitchen and comes back with two cups of tea and a wad of paper towel that she presses into my hands for me to dry my eyes and clean up my running mascara.
"Okay, let's play twenty questions," she says, sipping her tea. "Did you break up with Annie?"
I shake my head.
"Did she break up with you?" she asks, in case I'm being pedantic about wording. Which I often am. I shake my head again.
"Hmm." Ruth taps her chin. I sip my tea. The heat of the mug in my hands and the tea sliding down my throat helps to loosen the knots I've tied myself in.
"I met Ava's dad," I say at last. The words come out sounding strangled by the tightness in my throat.
"Ava's dad? I thought you didn't know who that was?"
"I didn't." I bite my tongue. Deep breath in. Slow breath out. "He turned up at Annie's family dinner. I recognized him."
"He just ... turned up? Who is he?"
"Annie's brother," I say. Ruth gasps, scandalized.
"Her brother? Ava's dad is your girlfriend's brother?" she cries out, sloshing tea over herself. She's wearing enough layers that it doesn't scald. Her shock sets me off again. I hold the sodden toilet paper to my face.
"It's such a fucking mess. It was awful. Annie was yelling and her brother looked so spooked and his girlfriend was there, and Annie's parents, and her other brother. It was too much. I had to get out of there."
"I understand." Ruth rubs my back and shushes me. "Goodness me. What a pickle."
"I just need some time. I'm okay, don't worry. I just need some time."
"Okay. Do you want me to stay?"
I shake my head. "I want to be alone."
"Okay."
"Thank you for getting me."
"Of course, hon. You know I'll always help, if I'm awake. I'll finish my tea and then I'll go."
Twenty minutes later, I'm alone. Once Ruth's gone, I realize I should have asked her to stay because the minute I'm alone, my brain goes into overdrive, parsing every inch of the last few hours and thumbing through the list of worst case scenarios. There are too many, so many unbearable ways this could end, and I am paralyzed on the sofa thinking about each and every one.
