Page 4

Rowan

“Natalie!” I call up the stairs an hour later. “Dinner!”

There’s no answer, except for a low woof from Lick Jagger, our Belgian Malinois. She’s always ready for dinner.

“Natalie!” I holler for the second time. But she doesn’t hear me over the music that’s blaring from her Bluetooth speaker. She carries that thing from room to room, like it would kill her to go without Taylor Swift for five minutes while she’s spreading her cosmetics all over my bathroom.

Dinner is a pesto pasta salad with grilled chicken, halved cherry tomatoes, and cubes of fresh mozzarella. I’m so hungry that I want to stick my face in the bowl. “Natalie!” I practically scream.

No reaction.

With a sigh, I start the trek up the surprisingly steep staircase of our narrow 1909 two-story New Englander. Sure enough, Natalie has shut herself in my bathroom. And she must be on the phone, because she’s shouting to a friend. “My. God! Do not call him a snack.” She howls with laughter. “Don’t be gross!”

I raise a fist to knock on the door, but something makes me hesitate.

“Yeah, I know. I’m totally sneaking out to meet him later.”

Oh Jesus . I pound on the door. Angrily. “Natalie?”

Taytay stops singing, mid-note. “I gotta go,” my daughter mutters. “Call you later.”

There’s a delay before the door opens, and when it does, I’m startled by the person looking back at me. In the first place, Natalie is five eight, so I actually have to tilt my chin to make eye contact.

In my mind, Natalie is eleven and wearing her Wonder Woman T-shirt with cutoffs and sneakers. She’s not this startlingly beautiful young woman with high cheekbones and poreless skin.

Natalie’s wide, gray eyes are currently made up in a style that makes her look thirty, not sixteen. It isn’t garish. The colors are muted and done with a level of skill and sophistication that I have never achieved in my lifetime and never will. Even if I were willing to watch ten thousand hours of TikTok makeup tutorials. Which I’m not.

She’s wearing a very short denim skirt and a cropped blouse that shows off long limbs and endless tight, youthful skin. It’s a humid June night, and I have no logical standing against this skimpy outfit that looks adorable on her.

Her scowl is her only unattractive feature. “God, Mom. What? ”

I bite back my frustration, which is a thing I do a lot. “I was calling you for dinner, but now I’d love to hear who you plan on ‘sneaking out’ to see? Your words, not mine.”

Her scowl deepens as her glance slides conveniently away. She grabs her ever-present phone off the vanity and shoves it into an impossibly hip little clutch purse I’ve never seen before. “Nobody,” she grunts. “Just a boy. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s not even true. That was just smack talk for my friends.”

“Oh.”

It is, of course, the exact right thing to tell me. Who among us hasn’t exaggerated to sound less pathetic? I do it hourly.

“What’s for dinner?” she asks, sliding past me into the hall and heading for the stairs.

“Pesto pasta salad. It’s already on the table.”

“Omigod, I can’t eat that. Too much garlic.” She practically sprints down the stairs. “I’ll eat something at Tessa’s.”

“But Nat!” I chase her down the stairs. “I cooked.”

“I’ll have some tomorrow,” she says in the kitchen. “Can I borrow the car?”

“No,” I say as a reflex. “Where are you even going?”

“To Tessa’s, like I just said.” She shrugs. “We’re studying for the bio final. It’s the worst one.”

“Oh.” I hesitate. “Then you might as well take the car.” Natalie is a very new driver, and I’m still struggling with the idea it’s legal for my sixteen-year-old to get behind the wheel of my Volvo and just drive away unsupervised.

But her best friend lives on the other side of town, and if I don’t send her in the car, she’s going to take her bike, which is possibly even more dangerous.

To her, anyway. If not to innocent bystanders.

“You sure?” she asks. “You said it’s book club night.”

Honestly, I’m surprised she remembered. It’s a rare day when she actually listens to anything I say.

“I’m blowing off book club.”

She gives me an arch look that teenage girls must practice in front of the mirror. “Got a better offer? Or are you just going to stay home and mope?”

“Just take the damn car.”

She grins, and it’s a little evil. “Bet you wouldn’t have made pesto if Mr. Stupid was still in the picture.”

“Well, now that you mention it.”

She laughs, and I’m hit with a wave of tenderness for my daughter. Natalie didn’t start referring to Tim as Mr. Stupid until he abruptly dumped me a few days ago. The loyalty is nice, even if it’s new.

Before this week, she called him that guy , and not in a nice way. She’d ask, “Are you making dinner? Or are you going out with that guy again?”

I couldn’t work out why she was so offended by his existence, when she can hardly be bothered to show her face when I’m at home. Before Tim, I’d had fewer than ten dates in fifteen years.

Our discussion is apparently over, because Natalie is lifting the car keys from the hook by the door and slipping her feet into...

“Wait. Those are my shoes.” They’re black Mary Janes with a slingback heel.

She offers me a shrug of one smooth shoulder. “You said they pinch your feet. Bye!” The door slams.

I wait by the window, watching as she backs the Volvo onto our street at a rate of three feet per hour. Backing up frightens her, and it should. Our street is narrow and littered with parked cars. I didn’t realize the car was capable of moving so slowly, but eventually she makes it, and I have to watch her pull away. She flips on the turn signal at the corner like a good girl.

And my heart is a mixed-up mess, like it always is. Natalie amazes me. She’s witty and clever and capable. She’s also stubborn and frequently selfish, and half the time we talk, I leave the room wishing I could list her for sale on Etsy. With free shipping.

Once her taillights disappear, I serve myself a generous portion of pasta and carry it to the sofa. This is more or less where I’ve spent every evening of this week, drinking wine and feeling sorry for myself.

I probably should have gone to the damn book club tonight. But at last month’s meeting, I’d giddily disclosed to my high school friends that I’d met someone. “His name is Tim, and he writes for the Wall Street Journal .”

They’d promptly pulled out their phones to google his head shot as well as his bylines. “I don’t know half the words in this article, but he’s a DILF!” my friend Mindy had clucked.

“Wow, Rowan! It’s always the quiet ones.”

Here I sit four weeks later, feeling heartbroken.

Okay, not exactly heartbroken. But shocked. And angry and depressed.

Although heartbroken sounds more poetic.

Bottom line—I’m just not in the mood to go sit on the rooftop terrace of my friend’s downtown condo and admit that I’m still the only single person in the bunch. I prefer to lick my wounds in private.

Too bad I’m already tired of the typical cures for the breakup blues. I’m sick of sulking on the couch, and I already ate all the ice cream. Or maybe that was Natalie. I hope so. After his brutal dismount from our relationship, Tim Kovak doesn’t deserve to send me up a size in jeans.

I open my phone and read his breakup text again.

Tim: Hope you get this before you leave. But I can’t make it tonight. This thing isn’t working for me anymore. And I wish you the best.

That was it. That was the whole message. I read it five times in a row, trying to make sense of it. That night, I ended up texting a screenshot to Beatrice.

Rowan: Did this guy just break up with me a half hour before our dinner reservation?

The fact that he wouldn’t take my call was a pretty good indication.

Beatrice: Oh honey.

I spent the evening in a tailspin, at times cursing his name and other times redialing him to leave him voice messages. I don’t understand. Why won’t you even talk to me? Did I do something wrong?

No pickups. No explanations. Just radio silence.

It was baffling. So much so that I’d opened up the FriendFinder app to make sure he wasn’t waiting for me at the restaurant we’d booked. Just in case the whole thing was a misunderstanding. But nope. His avatar was at his parents’ place, where he’d been staying. That night, anyway.

Twenty-four hours later was another story.

And now I’m all worked up again. Just thinking about it makes my eyes feel hot and gritty. Ten weeks of dating followed by four nights of anguish, with nothing more to show for it than a few tears.

“I hate him,” I say into the stillness of my home.

Lickie whines. She comes to sit at my feet, watching me with sorrowful brown eyes.

“You want a walk, don’t you?”

Her tail swishes.

After taking her for a halfhearted walk around the block, I change into my pajamas upstairs and settle into bed with the TV remote. The dog is a comforting weight against my knee. But after a half hour of surfing Netflix, nothing sticks.

Muting the TV, I eye my phone the same way I’d contemplate the last cookie in the jar. There’s nobody around to see how far I’ve fallen, so I grab the damn thing and wake it up.

Even so, I just hold it in my hand for a long beat, gazing at the lock screen photo I took last summer of Natalie in front of the palace of Versailles. I can see the whole photo, because I have no notifications. It’s after eight p.m., and my work colleagues are occupied with their lives. I’m almost forty years old, and I barely have a life outside architecture and Natalie.

Being with Tim was a little like uncovering one of the murals in the mansion. Before I met him, I’d painted over my romantic life with the brushstrokes of a workaholic and single mom. I’d done this for so long that I’d forgotten anyone else was under there.

Then he showed up, and there was someone to meet for coffee. Or Thai food. And, eventually, slightly awkward sex.

I wasn’t in love with him. The truth is I don’t think I’m capable of really falling for someone. I was burned so badly in my twenties that I’m probably just numb inside.

Tim, though. He was a good man. And I could have sworn he had real feelings for me. It was the way he looked at me sometimes. With a banked fire behind his eyes.

Or so I’d thought, right up until the evening it all ended. His departure from my life was so abrupt that he’d left a watch—one of his collection—and a set of cuff links on my bedside table.

Who leaves his watch if he’s not planning to be back?

It nags at me. The violence of it. Like he’d finally caught a whiff of my neediness, and couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I spent the first twenty-four hours feeling ashamed that I’d misread the situation so terribly. I did a lot of looking back on our time together, wondering what I’d done to scare him.

Wondering whether I’d leaked desperation from every pore.

I poke my phone again, but instead of opening a text box, I tap on the FriendFinder app. It’s a recent habit, since Natalie got her driver’s license. That’s how I reassure myself about her safety.

But the week before our breakup, Tim and I got separated while jogging together on a trail. I’d texted to ask where he was.

Rowan: Can you share your location?

Tim: Sure, if you tell me how.

He’d shared it, but then forgotten. And now I’m obsessed with peeking at his location. The night after our breakup, his avatar had appeared on Middle Street at Honey Paw, the bustling Asian fusion place he’d brought me on our first real dinner date.

I’ve always loved that restaurant, and when I’d suggested it, Tim had given me a quirky smile and said, “That’s my favorite. And it’s kind of a litmus test for me with people—to see whether they’ll like it or not. I guess you pass the test.”

Obviously, I failed some other test, because his avatar has shown up all over town this week.

Last night he went to a movie at the Nickelodeon. I’m not proud of immediately googling the lineup, trying to guess which film he’d seen. It’s possible he’s going all these places alone. But I doubt it.

How could I so badly misread the nature of our relationship? So badly misread him ?

And here I am again, watching the spin as it tries to make contact.

Natalie’s avatar appears first, glowing on Munjoy Hill, at Tessa’s house. I wish the app could also tell me if they’re really studying for the bio final, but technology only allows me to invade my daughter’s privacy up to a point.

Then, inevitably, I tap Tim’s name.

Once again, he’s not at home. But he’s not in a restaurant, either. He’s driving, his icon gliding down Spring Street.

He stops at a light. I wait and watch like a stalker, although I feel no actual remorse.

When he zigzags onto Park, prickles rise at the back of my neck. What’s he doing in my neighborhood?

Never mind that thousands of other people live on this end of the peninsula. His location brings on an irrational fantasy, where he pulls up in front of my house and knocks on the door. When I open it, he’s standing there with flowers—peonies, my favorite.

I don’t know what I was thinking, Rowan , he says. I was an idiot to let you go. I care about you so much. I must have panicked .

Ugh. I want to kick myself for even thinking it—and for opening this app in the first place. I need to stop. All it would take is a couple of taps on his icon. Unfollow this user? Confirm .

My finger hovers above the button, but then Tim turns onto Danforth.

I hold my breath, watching as he stops in a spot I know well—in front of the Wincott Mansion. There’s no mistaking it.

I zoom in on the map, and it seems he’s in our spot—where we used to sit together by the waterfront. My breath comes out in a whoosh.

“Timothy Kovak, you are an asshole .”

What kind of guy hangs out in the empty parking lot of his ex-girlfriend’s workplace? It’s also the place where we shared our first serious conversation, our first kiss.

I drop my phone and climb out of bed, stunned. The dog follows me, expecting something. A snack. A game. A visitor. She wags her fluffy tail and waits.

But I don’t know what to do with my outrage. So I walk downstairs, open the refrigerator, and stare inside.

Nothing stares back except for a tub of hummus and the rest of the pasta salad. The bottle of wine I’d been nursing this week is long gone.

I slam the door and pace into Natalie’s former playroom. When I’d decided to leave my old architecture firm, I’d boxed up the dolls and the Legos, and I’d started tearing off the old wallpaper. I’d intended to turn this room into a home office for myself. But then I took the job with Hank and put the project on hold.

Now there’s a dusty futon sofa in here, some sandpaper, and not much else. It’s a little depressing.

Needing a project, I pick up the scraper and attack a stubborn blister of old paint on the windowsill. This holds my attention for all of about ten minutes, until I put down the scraper and pull out my phone again.

Tim is still sitting there in front of the mansion. “Can you believe this bullshit?” I demand of my empty house.

Lickie whines.

I return to my bedroom but nothing has changed. Tim’s avatar is still parked by the mansion. My mind whirs through various scenarios. There’s another woman in Tim’s car. A new one. A younger one who also passed the litmus test at Honey Paw. Now they’re on to stage two already, and—outrageously—it’s happening three blocks from my house.

Three blocks...

My gaze snaps to the dog, who’s staring up at me with doleful eyes. The words are out of my mouth before I can think better of it. “Lickie, want to go for a walk?”