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I smiled, shaking my head, and looked over at Russell. He was looking back at me steadily, like he knew I was stalling. I took a breath and twisted my fingers in the dog’s fur. “It was just—I kind of understand—that is…” My voice was coming out halting and jerky, like a car I couldn’t quite get to start. “What you were saying about Michigan,” I finally said.
“Right.”
“I’m kind of in a similar thing with Stanwich.”
“Because you got that great financial-aid package?”
I nodded. And once again, it was like I could see my escape hatch—I could just leave this there. But I was done keeping it close to my chest. The thing that had been wrecking my sleep and churning my thoughts for months now—I wanted to share it with the one person who, I realized, might actually understand. “It’s actually because of my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Yeah.” I took a breath—and told him the truth. “She works in the HR department at Stanwich College.”
Russell frowned. “But I thought… you said she was in England?”
“She was. But she moved back to the States last year.” I started walking a little faster, and Russell sped up to keep pace with me.
“So—that was a fact about your life that you forgot to mention.”
“Russell.”
“Sorry.” We walked in silence for a moment, and I could feel Russell looking over at me, waiting for me to continue, as I tried to figure out what, exactly, I wanted to say. “So your mom works at the college. And that’s how you have such a great aid package. Right?”
He was laying out the facts, but I could also hear the question in his voice—he was struggling to understand why this was such a big deal. I suddenly flashed back to the Stanwich College brochure Gillian had sent to me, the Post-it with her handwriting on the front: A perfect place for a fresh start! As though it was that easy. As though it was a thing she got to decide.
“It’s just—my mom left when I was two.”
“Oh.” I watched his face change, like he was shifting gears. “I—you said your parents got divorced—”
“They did. Eventually. After she walked out. She wanted to be an actress—and I guess we were holding her back?” I tried to toss this off, the way I always did when I talked about Gillian. But it wasn’t working this time. The words were settling on me, heavy with their meaning. “I mean—who knows. She and my dad had me pretty young. I don’t think I was part of either of their plans.” I glanced over at Russell in the moonlight, his expression letting me know that it was okay, that I could go on.
“It’s just…” This was something I tried not to think about too much but that would inevitably creep in, an insidious whisper whenever I was feeling particularly low. “It was probably me who wrecked their plans, actually. My dad trying to be a novelist, Gillian—my mother—trying to be an actress. But then I came along and my dad’s temporary job became his real one.…” I shook my head. “Anyway. She left us and went to New York to make it—and then to London. Because there’s no acting jobs in LA. And then once she was gone, Gillian didn’t really make time for me when I was growing up. I didn’t see her very much. Occasionally… but…”
“Darcy, I’m so sorry.” I could practically feel Russell’s eyes searching for mine, but to get through this, I needed to be looking at the asphalt or the tangly fur on Andy’s back, not his blue-green eyes.
“I feel like… it almost would have been better if she had made it. If she had become a movie star like she always wanted. Like it at least would have been for something. But she just married a British guy and had three kids with him. Kids she actually takes care of.”
I heard Russell draw in a sharp breath. Tears were starting to prickle my eyes and I held the dog a little closer. A part of me still couldn’t believe that I was doing this—sharing things I never told people. Things I never even usually let myself think.
“But I was fine with how things were,” I said, shifting Andy to one arm and brushing my hand across my eyes quickly. “I mean…” I adjusted the dog again—he was starting to get heavy.
Russell reached out and took him from me carefully, his eyes not leaving mine. He settled Andy in the crook of his arm—the dog blinked, unfazed, and yawned again—and gestured for me to keep going.
I looked up for just a moment at a cloud crossing the moon and took a breath. What was the point in lying? If I’d ever had a moment where I could be totally honest, it would seem to be now. “Okay, maybe I wasn’t fine. I was pretty angry with her. I am,” I corrected a second later. “But I’d really come to terms with it. I was okay with this status quo we’d found. You know?”
“But then something happened?”
“Yeah. When she and Ant-ony—that’s her husband—”
“Why does everything sound better with a British accent?”
“It really does, doesn’t it?”
“Sorry—go on.”
“When they moved from the UK to Connecticut, Gillian got a job in Human Resources. At Stanwich College. And suddenly she’s back in touch, insisting I apply to Stanwich. Making sure that I know that employees’ kids get basically all their tuition paid.”
“Right.”
