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I shrug. “I guess upheaval will do that to you.”

“I was worried you’d be on the couch, deeply depressed, eating ice cream and needing a shower. But instead you look ... relaxed. Happy.” The takes off his cap, runs fingers through his hair, then replaced the cap. “Damn.”

“You don’t like that I’m relaxed and happy?”

“No, of course not! I mean, I love that you’re doing well. I’m happy that you’re happy. Only ... I’ve been sent to convince you to come back. Mom will have my hide if I don’t. Dad is already moaning that he will go to jail because his books will be in disarray without you there.”

A wave of guilt washes over me at Bobby’s words. I abandoned Dad. Mom. Mickey. Bobby himself. I abandoned everyone I know.

I’m a bad daughter. They gave me everything they could, and I abandoned them.

But at the receding edge of guilt, there is a new feeling. It’s one that I now recognize, one that I’ve spent a long time suppressing and just as long doing my best not to name.

That feeling is anger. Anger borne of frustration, because I was never able to do what I felt was right.

“Dad can hire an accountant,” I say, my voice lower and more stern than I intended. “Or I can keep doing books for him remotely, if you or Mickey would send me the receipts. I don’t have to stay in St. Cloud just because Dad is too cheap to hire someone to do the books.”

Bobby blinks. “We’re family, Lizzie. We should stick together.”

“We are sticking together. I didn’t move across the world. It’s only five hours from Madison to St. Cloud. You can come see me every week if you want.”

He takes off his hat, spins it around on his fist a couple of times, puts it back again. “Look, I know Jake breaking up with you was hard. I understand wanting to get out so you don’t have to see him anymore. I get that. We all do. But it’s been two months. And you seem to be doing well here. I think you are strong enough to come back.”

I’m boiling with fury because he's not hearing me. I'm afraid I will start yelling if we continue to argue, and the thought of it makes me feel weary.

Instead, I open the fridge and inspect its contents.

“Are you hungry?” I ask.

“Yeah. Hadn’t eaten since lunch.”

“I can make us sandwiches. Or I have some canned soup.”

“Could you do grilled cheese and tomato soup?”

“Yeah. I’ve got everything I need for it,” I say, pulling out cheese and butter from the fridge for the sandwiches, and fresh basil for the soup.

“Mom can’t stop talking about you,” Bobby says as I work on the food. “She goes on and on about how you must’ve done something terrible for Jake to break up with you, how a nice boy like him wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t done something first. She says you ran away because you felt guilty. About whatever you did. I think she thinks you cheated on him.”

I stop buttering the toast. “Do you believe that?”

“I don’t,” Bobby says. “I’m just telling you what she says.”

“Jake broke up with me,” I say, butter knife pointing at my chest. “You know, I put up with a lot of petty bullshit from him over the years. Then he told me that he wasn’t sure marrying me was what he wanted anymore. I couldn’t stay around him after that. I had to get away.”

“Mom and Dad think you had a breakdown.”

“It’s more of a disembodied feeling, like my mind and my emotions and my body all split. I couldn’t be sad or angry or anything. I was just numb. I was like that for a couple of weeks. But I’ve found my way back. I’m back in my body and I’m feeling good. I am never going back, Bobby. I love you and I love Mom and Dad and I even love that annoying turd Mickey”—Bobby grins at those words— “but I’m feeling like I’m finally inside my body in a way that I never remember being before and, honestly, I want to keep feeling this way. For however long it lasts.”

I press on the sandwiches with a spatula. They make a satisfying sizzling sound.

“I had no idea about any of this,” Bobby says. “I always thought you mooned over Jake, and that he was a stuck-up douchebag, but that he treated you right. I never realized that he’d been making you unhappy all these years.”

“Not unhappy, but not happy either. I couldn’t see it while I was with him, though. Lack of experience is a bitch.”

I stir the tomato soup on the stove, then chop up some fresh basil and drop it inside.

“That smells amazing,” Bobby says, looking like a cartoon wolf.