“Okay,” I say.
“Hey, Seth?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re going to get through this. It’ll never feel as bad as it feels tonight.”
His kindness cracks me open.
“I love her so much, Dave,” I sob.
“I know, buddy. I know.”
“What do I do?”
“Cry it out. Drink some water. Go to sleep. Text me with your flight info and I’ll pick you up.”
I nod. This is all sensible. These are things I can do.
“Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?” I ask.
“Do you want me to?”
I certainly don’t want to do it myself. They love Molly. They’ll be crushed. And then they’ll be furious at her. And for some reason, I can’t stand the idea of that.
“Yes, please,” I say.
“Then I will.”
“Okay.”
There’s a pause.
“You don’t deserve this, bud,” Dave says.
Tears slide down my cheeks. It’s not about what I deserve, or what Molly does, but it’s nice to hear those words.
“Okay. I’m going to go now.”
“Get some rest. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I imagine myself sitting on a stool at the island of Dave’s kitchen, the boys yelling about LEGOs over my shoulder, eating leftover green bean casserole. It’s something to hold on to. I just have to keep it together until then.
And you know what?
I will.
I’m not going to sit here shivering. I’m going to go through the motions of being a functional adult and see if they make me feel like one.
I walk inside through the kitchen. It’s an ungodly mess. Which is good. If there’s one thing I know how to do on autopilot, it’s clean.
I roll up my sleeves and throw myself into the solace of soap bubbles and scrubbing.
It takes forty-five minutes to clean up, and Molly never materializes. When I walk into the dining room to begin clearing off the table, she’s sitting there, slumped in a chair with her eyes closed.
“Are you awake?” I ask, because her back is to me.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Do you want food? Or should I put it away?”
She still doesn’t look at me. She just shrugs. “Toss it.”
“I’m not tossing out an entire Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Fine,” she says. She stands up and turns around, and she looks like hell. My impulse is to take her into my arms, despite everything.
But I don’t.
Instead, I watch her pick up a fork and stab it listlessly into the gratin pan. She eats two bites of cheesy potatoes and swallows them like she might gag. Then she digs into the breast of one of the Cornish game hens with her fingers, rips off some meat, dabs it into cranberry sauce, and eats that. She plucks a single green bean out of the serving bowl and forces that down too.
“Okay,” she says. “Do what you want with the rest.”
This display pisses me off.
“Why are you acting like a child?”
“Because I am one,” she says tonelessly. “I’m an emotionally stunted person. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
