Page 4

“This is your fault. Your basic disregard for airplane etiquette sent my pinot flying all over me. If you’re going to lean your seat all the way back, next time give the unlucky person behind you a little heads-up. It’s selfish and rude, and bad enough to be bombarded by men who don’t allow you to take up the space you deserve on all ends, but—”

I stop because his eyes are narrowing into a look I can’t decipher.

“You’re judging me.” I fold my arms over my poor wine-soaked sweater, and turn to the conveyor belt to start searching for my suitcase.

“Why ever would I judge you?” he asks with only a hint of sarcasm.

“I don’t know, I’m drinking wine in the afternoon, and I’m clearly a mess, and—”

I glance over to catch his lips barely flicking up into a smile as he interrupts me.

“You’re going to your mom’s, right?”

I nod.

“We should split a cab.”

I eye him skeptically.

“For efficiency,” he continues.

I look at him, a little dumbfounded, honestly. Yes, our moms still live next door to each other. Yes, sharing a cab would, in fact, be efficient. But there is absolutely zero chance I want to spend any more of my day with Henry Cole, unless I can enact revenge, specifically involving a dark beverage and his pristine white shirt, which I’m now close enough to see is tailored to perfection, his frame no longer that of a lanky teenage boy. Now he has the body of a man. Which I don’t want to be thinking about, at this moment in time or ever.

I turn back to Henry and see him lifting his bag off the belt. He returns to me and waits for a response to his offer.

“I’m good. It was…fine? Seeing you?” I pause. Neither of us is buying that. “No, that’s a lie, it was truly terrible and exactly what I would have expected.”

Henry nods but doesn’t walk away. I keep an eye out for my suitcase.

We wait in silence as the bags on the belt dwindle down. I tell him he can go, but he just stands there next to me.

Perfect.

When it becomes clear that my bag is not in Chicago with me, I brace myself for all the paperwork.

Henry finally turns to head out. “Too bad you don’t want to ride together. I would’ve even taken pity on you and covered the cost. Anyway, I’ll give your mother your regards.”

He smirks as he walks out the doors to get a cab, and I’m left wondering what the hell that’s supposed to mean.

Chapter 3

I finally make it home, suitcase-less, after hours of waiting and then a grueling cab ride into the suburbs. I was informed that the airline would try to locate my bag and deliver it to me within twenty-four hours, but with the holiday season, there were no guarantees.

The house I grew up in looks mostly the same as it did two years ago on my last visit. The white wraparound porch could still use a refresh, but the curtains are open on the bay window that faces out toward the street, and before I even step inside, I’m hit with the feeling of home. The familiar rust-colored reading chair in the window. The needlepoint garden my grandmother stitched hanging on the wall. Inside smells like it always has—roast chicken and lemon and my mother’s tiny indoor herb garden, but there’s a strange feeling amid the comfort. I’m no longer nose-blind to the scents of home.

Without any of the clothes I’d packed for the trip, I’m forced to go through my childhood bedroom, where I find jeans that went out of style years before I gave up wearing them, and a worn pink pullover from high school. It was my favorite sweatshirt, a souvenir from a class trip to Michigan, endlessly soft even after a hundred times through the laundry. I thought I’d lost it when I went to college, but here it was, this whole time. With my hair up in an unkempt bun and no makeup, I really do look like the ghost of my teenage self.

I don’t want to be this person, the person who only just lost her dad. I don’t like being the version of me that he knew. Grief does funny things to you. All Hannah ever wants is to reminisce. But I have to keep it all locked away, in a sacred place no one else can access.

This room is a still photograph of my former life. Eighteen-year-old Norah. Pink walls that don’t feel like they reflect any iteration of the person I’ve been.

I need to get out of my head. I notice a photo album from my bat mitzvah on my nightstand. Mom said she found it while emptying the basement.

I flip it open, running my fingers over the pearly matte of the photos, still perfectly crisp thirteen years later, and start to page through. The purple satin dress I’d absolutely begged my mom for. The purple bands on my braces, which I thought would match but ended up looking like I had gum caught in my teeth. But even that couldn’t stop my cheesy grin. Little preteen Hannah and the fluffy pink dress that she’d somehow aged out of by the big day, that Dad talked her into wearing anyway, just to keep Mom from having a breakdown.

Posed photos of my parents and me on the bimah.

Frankie and I at the reception, with oversized sunglasses, thinking we were the coolest.