Chapter 25

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The family stayed around the table chatting long after everyone's plates were empty and all who wanted seconds had had them. Julia's children, a six-year-old girl and a boy - was he four yet? Were fidgeting in their seats and starting to squabble, so Kennedy offered to take them in the back yard to run a bit before dessert. Julia gave her a grateful look and started clearing the dishes from the table.

It was a cool day and getting colder now that the sun had gone down, but the kids both ran screaming for their coats, then ran screaming out the back door. Though Kennedy adored her niece and nephew, she could see how doing dishes would seem like a break for someone who spent every day with them.

Maggie started kicking fallen leaves into a pile and ordered little Emmett to help. Her little brother helped for a bit, then started kicking his way through the middle of the pile making Godzilla noises. When Maggie started shrieking at him, Kennedy offered to help her draw a hopscotch grid on the little sidewalk between the house and the shed.

Kennedy rubbed her forehead as she stood just outside the shed door, trying to keep an eye on Emmett in the leaves and Maggie in the shed as she searched for the chalk.

"Found it, Aunt Keddy!" Maggie shrieked.

She jumped up and down, clutching her treasure in her mittened hands. Maggie was perfectly capable of saying 'Kennedy', but Julia had been so enamored with Maggie's toddler attempt that she'd started saying it, too.

Heedless of her white tights, Maggie knelt down on all fours, save her drawing hand, and sketched out the first few squares of the hopscotch grid. She stopped suddenly and looked up.

"Is Grandma mad at you?"

"Mad? Of course not. She just wants me to tell her all my secrets."

Maggie's eyes went wide. "You've got secrets?"

"All grown-ups do."

"Kids, too," Maggie said, not to be out-done. "What's your secret?"

"Promise you won't tell Grandma?"

Maggie solemnly crossed her leaf-flecked mitten-tip in an X over her mouth.

Kennedy leaned low. "A boy was mean to me."

"Did you tell your teacher?"

"No. I wasn't in class when it happened."

Maggie mulled that over for a while. "You should tell your friends not to be friends with him anymore. People shouldn't be friends with other people who are mean."

"You know what, Maggie? I think you're right."

The conversation came to a halt when Emmett screeched. He was face-down in the leaves, holding his head and crying. Kennedy ran over to him, nearly tripping on a plastic garden gnome that he'd managed to toss in the leaf pile while she was distracted. Maggie beat her there, however, and pulled him into her lap. Emmett's cries immediately grew quieter when Maggie asked him what hurt and examined the injury. When she lifted his hair, Kennedy could see a red mark on his forehead the size of her thumbprint, but it wasn't bleeding, so she let Maggie continue to comfort her brother.

When Emmett was ready, Maggie held his hand and walked him inside to be fussed over by their mother. When Julia scooped Emmett into her arms, Kennedy helped Maggie take off her coat.

"You were great with your brother when he got hurt. You really helped him feel better," Kennedy told the girl.

"Mom says you have to be friends with boys that are your brother, even when he doesn't do what you want him to do."

When Kennedy's mother announced that it was time for cake, Emmett made a miraculous recovery, bounding to the table, fork in hand before Kennedy's father had finished blowing out his candles. Kennedy was temporarily relieved when the gifts after dinner with small and few, though guilt hit her again when she realized her father's actual birthday was tomorrow and the family was likely saving their big gifts until then. She made a mental note, followed by programming a phone reminder, to look for something she could purchase online, like tickets to a movie he would like, or a subscription to something that would come in the mail.

After cake, Julia settled the kids in front of a video in the living room and sat at the breakfast table in the kitchen where she could just see them. The other Hale women joined her there with mugs of sweet, fruity herbal tea.

"So Kennedy," her mother said when the conversation slowed.

It took all of Kennedy's willpower not to groan out loud. During her childhood, that tone of voice was usually followed by, "I distinctly remember telling you to clean your room," or, "Your principal called today."

"Yes, Mom?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"Last we talked, it sounded like you and this boy were edging towards serious. Now, every time I ask about your canceled plans, you flinch. What happened, honey?"

Julia pretended to find something very interesting in the bottom of her mug. Grandma made no effort to disguise the fact that she found this conversation much more interesting than their previous topic, which was Maggie's reading level.

Kennedy gave a sarcastic bark of laughter. "Of all the words that could be used to describe our situation, 'serious' is the last one I'd choose."

"He wasn't terribly mature, then?"

Kennedy glanced at her grandmother. "You could say that."

"Enough with the half-answers. Kennedy, are you okay?"

Kennedy leaned back in her hard wooden chair. That was the big question, wasn't it? Charlie had showed her passion, excitement, curiosity. He'd turned out to be a world-class jerk, which drastically changed how she felt about him now, but it would never change how she'd felt about him before everything came crashing down. If only he hadn't done that one meager, huge thing.

"I think I will be. Eventually," she said at last. In a small voice, she added, "But I'm not sure I want to be."

Once she'd admitted what she had been trying so hard to hide form herself for so long, she felt a wave of relief draw the weight of her delusion away, only to be hit by an incoming wave of sadness. The enormity of what she'd lost was making itself felt.

It must have shown on her face, too, because she was soon wrapped in the arms of not only her mother, but her sister and grandmother, too. They might not all completely understand her, or treat her like the adult she was, but they loved her; of that she was absolutely certain.

She patted her grandmother's hand. If only Charlie wasn't such a slimy leech.

After Grandma and Julia and her gang had left, Kennedy retreated to the relative quiet of her old bedroom. It was exactly the same as it was the day she'd left for her undergraduate degree at eighteen. There was a poster-sized print of her favorite fractal. There was the shelf full of her childhood books: Alice and Frodo, Lyra and Harry. There used to be a stack of pencil-puzzle books, but her mother threw them away once they were all filled in. In the closet would be her abacus, her toy cash register, and all the Legos she'd managed to hide from James and Julia.

Exhausted by the drive, the party, and being through the emotional ringer, Kennedy got ready for bed and climbed beneath the sheets of her narrow single bed. What was it about sleeping in your childhood bedroom that felt both constrictive and comforting all at once, like a too-long hug from your mother in front of your friends? She arranged her body into its familiar position to match the smallness of the bed and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.


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