by Becky Monson
“Huh?” I shake my head a couple of times, trying to bring my brain back around.
“You look super pissed,” she says.
“I’m fine. I was just thinking about something.”
I was staring out the window, at Dawson and Robin walking together toward his car to go to lunch. I wish I could have snapped a picture for Hannah, since she doesn’t believe me about them being together. I could have had the perfect proof. Robin saying something and Dawson laughing. A big ole guffaw kind of laugh. Head thrown back and everything. Then he put his arm around her and gave her a very cozy side hug. The kind where they rested their heads together.
And here I sit, watching the front desk, like a loser.
That’s it. I’m firing Robin.
Except that I can’t do that. Because it would be wrong. And Robin is really good at her job. I just wish she was a little bit … not so attractive. Or funny. I mean, I haven’t actually heard her say anything funny, but clearly Dawson has.
Dang you, Robin, and your stupid humor and pretty face.
I even tested out my theory today, to look outside myself more. I was extra nice to her and told her how pretty she looked. It didn’t make me feel any better. Not one bit. So I guess I’m done with that. Back to my regular inward-looking self.
“Is it June?”
“What?”
“Our neighbor? Coming to the party with Dad?” Chelsea furrows her brow at me, a mix of confusion and concern on her face.
“Yeah,” I say, taking a split second to decide that this is the path I should go down. I don’t want to explain this whole thing to Chelsea. She doesn’t even know about my Dawson crush to begin with. Besides, it’s a moot point.
And anyway, I am kind of annoyed by my dad bringing June to the party.
Chelsea turns so we’re face-to-face over the high-top desk. She’s got her I’m-the-big-sister face on. Oh, fun.
“Maggie, Dad is a grown man. We need to be okay with however he finds happiness.” She gives me a closed-mouth smile and a quick dip of her chin.
I see right through it. “That was well rehearsed. Good job, you.”
Chelsea lets her shoulders slouch. “I’m trying. I don’t like it either.”
“I know. But Dad said they were going as friends,” I say confidently.
Chelsea eyes me wearily. “You fell for that?”
It’s my turn to furrow my brow at her. “Well … didn’t you?”
“No,” Chelsea says, her voice almost sounding shrill. “After some thought, I think that’s Dad’s way of gently letting us in on this thing.”
“You’re lying.”
She just gives me a shrug of her shoulders in response.
“Who’s lying?” Devon asks, walking up to us, the glass front door swinging behind him as he enters the lobby of the shop. He comes to stand by Chelsea, both of them now looking at me.
“Chelsea thinks Dad and June aren’t just friends,” I say, reaching up and tugging on the pendant on my necklace.
“Yeah,” he says, like he can’t believe I hadn’t figured that out.
“You too?” I ask, my eyes wide.
“I think he’s just trying to tell us in that Dad way like he always does,” Devon says, and Chelsea turns her face toward him, giving him a nod of approval. Since when did these two bond? I’m supposed to be the glue that holds the two of them together. I’m the middle child; it’s my job.
I feel my stomach sink as the realization settles on me. Dad … and June?
“I don’t like it either,” Devon says in response to my scrunched-up facial expression. “I’ve caught him twice now texting on his phone and smiling at it.” He shakes his head.
“Is that who you think he’s been texting?” Chelsea asks, letting her jaw fall.
My mind flashes back to the jump—or the attempted jump—when I noticed my dad texting rapidly on his phone. At the time, I was doing my own rapid texting to my mom, so I didn’t think much of it. But now that I think of it, there have been other times I’ve caught him doing the same. I just wrote it off as no big deal. Could he have been texting June? And that long ago?
“What do we do?” Chelsea asks.
Devon lifts his shoulders briefly. “Not much we can do.”
“I’m suddenly feeling offended that he’s been texting June so much, when all I ever get from him is one-word replies to my texts,” Chelsea says. “I thought he was just bad at texting.”
Of course Chelsea would make this about her.
“I think we’re making a lot of assumptions here,” I say.
“How can we find out?” Devon asks.
I twist my lips to the side. “Well …”
“Well, what?” He squints his blue eyes at me.
“He’s in the shop right now, trying to help your friend Chad learn how to wrap a door properly. No one seems to be able to teach him.” I give my best look of disapproval to my brother.
Devon doesn’t respond. He doesn’t seem to care at all that Chad has probably cost us more money than he’s made us.
“So what?” Chelsea says, her impatience starting to show.
Devon snaps his fingers and points at me. “His phone—”
“Is probably in the top drawer of his desk,” I finish.
“Oh,” Chelsea says, her eyes bright with understanding.
Without words, I set the main phone to go to voicemail and the three of us walk quietly to our dad’s office, watching our backs as we go.
Sure enough, once we get there, there’s no sign of our dad, and like the predictable man he is, the phone is sitting in his top drawer.
Chelsea is the one who grabs it. She holds it in her hand and looks at it like it’s a foreign object she’s never seen before. Then she holds the phone out to me.
“I don’t think we should do this,” she says.
“You mean you don’t want to do this but you want me to,” I say, giving her a knowing look.
“Yes,” she says.
I take it from her and press the button on the older phone—the one we’ve been bothering our dad to upgrade—and watch the screen light up. No passcode, because passcodes are for people who can remember numbers, and our dad is not one of those people.
I go to the texting app and open it up, holding the phone out in front of me as we all gather around. Devon stands in a position so he can see the door in case Dad walks in and catches us.
This all seems so familiar. Like we’ve done this before. But I don’t recall snooping on our parents like this. Not the three of us. What I do recall is me and Devon sneaking into Chelsea’s room and reading her diary, which was such a waste of snooping—it was so boring and all about boys.
I click on June’s name, and there’s definitely been some texting going on. The first few texts seem benign. Just chitchat, not a big deal. I feel my heart lighten a bit. Chelsea and Devon have it all wrong. Dad really is just friends with June.
Using my thumb, I scroll down, watching as older texts populate on the screen. I’m a mix of emotions—worry that we might get caught, anxiety about what we might find, and a dash of shame for snooping like this.
“Good hell, they use a lot of emojis,” Devon says, pointing at the phone. He’s right; it’s mostly smiley faces and a few heart eyes sprinkled in. There’s nothing of interest in actual wordage, though. Just June asking my dad to lunch and my dad sending back an emoji thumbs-up. Then my dad asking if her power went out, to which she sends back a thumbs-down emoji.
This is stupid. This is definitely like finding Chelsea’s diary.
I scroll down again, watching some new texts populate.
My stomach does a little bobbing thing as these texts fill the screen. There’s one with just a kissy-face emoji. And another text from my dad asking when she’s coming over.
When I scroll down again, there’s a text from June calling him “Babe,” and then there’s another one that’s just the fire emoji, and next to it, it says “our song.” To which my dad
has sent back a fire emoji. There really are so many emojis going on here.
“Our song?” Chelsea reads the text out loud.
“What song is that?” Devon asks. “And why would they have a song?”
“Is there a fire song?” I ask, looking from Chelsea to Devon.
Chelsea pulls her phone from her back pocket and, pulling up her music app, does a search.
“There’s a song called ‘Fire,’” she says. “By … the Pointer Sisters?”
“Play it,” Devon says.
She hits play and then turns up the volume.
We all gather in tighter, listening to the song as it begins, the chords of an electric guitar playing a catchy rhythm with a strong bass line.
Chelsea lifts the phone up higher so we can hear it better through her tiny speaker. The singer starts out and we listen to the words, taking turns glancing at each other. I wonder if we got this right. Maybe June meant a different song.
The words are benign enough. Something about the car radio and someone’s saying they’re a liar. But then all of our eyes go wide as the opening verse moves to three-part harmony and suddenly they’re singing about kissing and fire and, oh my gosh, this song is … well, it’s sexy and a little dirty and I kind of wish we never did this.
Chelsea, also looking a little green, stops the song and the three of us just stand there, staring at each other.
“What the hell?” Devon finally says.
I look down at the phone in my hand, my dad’s phone. The screen has now timed out and gone black.
“Put it back,” Chelsea says, almost in a panic. “Just, put it back now.”
I do as she says, and then without words the three of us walk down the hall to my office.
“So this is bigger than we thought,” I say as soon as the door is shut.
“What do we do?” Devon asks.
“What can we do?” says Chelsea.
We all look at each other.
You can tell when the answer hits all of us. There’s nothing. We can do nothing.
Chelsea lets out a breath. “We could be supportive?”
“No,” Devon says, shaking his head.
“Dev,” she chides. “He’s our dad. Don’t we want him to be happy?”
“But what about the dog idea?” I offer.
She shakes her head at me. “If this is what Dad wants …”
“Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?” Devon says. “This could just be dating. Or maybe … you know … other stuff.”
“Gross!” I say loudly. Chelsea covers her mouth with her hand.
“No,” I say after a few seconds of silence. “Devon is right. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
“But they have a song,” Chelsea says. “That sounds more serious to me.”
“That’s true,” I say.
Silence lands on the room again.
“I think it’s crazy,” Devon says. “Mom’s only been gone four months.”
“I know,” Chelsea says, putting a hand on his arm. “But I read an article the other day that said widowed men who were in good relationships get remarried really fast. I didn’t think it was true in our case, but now …”
“You guys, he’s bringing a date to the party. Not a wife,” I say. “And as far as we’re supposed to know, she’s only a friend.”
We really are getting ahead of ourselves.
Devon runs his fingers through his thick brown hair. “I guess I don’t even want him bringing a date.”
We all nod solemnly at each other.
“I think we should just wait and see what happens,” Chelsea says.
Chapter 11
Chase: When will I stop counting time in days?
I look down at my phone, scrunching my brow. I’m currently sitting on the couch watching television as I eat a bowl of pralines and cream ice cream for dinner. It’s how I’m coping with my dad and June, and Robin and Dawson.
I need someone to talk to, but Hannah wasn’t here when I got home and when I asked her when she’d be here, she just sent back that I shouldn’t wait up. She’s been working on a case that’s kept her at the office late at night for the past week.
So I’ve been spending my night with ice cream and reruns of Seinfeld.
I text a question mark back to Chase.
Chase: It’s been ten days since my mom died. Tomorrow will be eleven.
Maggie: Oh. Right. In my experience, it’s days, then weeks, and then months. Then years … I’m assuming. I haven’t gotten to the year part yet.
Chase: Is there anything else we count like this?
Maggie: Babies? That’s all I can think of.
Chase: So birth and death. Kind of interesting.
Maggie: I’d really never thought of that until right now.
Chase: I’m a thinker … sometimes.
I smile at my phone.
Maggie: How is day ten?
Chase sends me back the poop emoji. Such a fitting response.
Maggie: Sounds about right
Chase: I’m tired of feeling sad
Maggie: It’s not fun
Chase: I need to think about something else. Whatever happened to that guy with the nice butt?
My eyes go wide at my phone and I let out a little yelp. I’d somehow compartmentalized this whole thing. I’d put the stranger that had my mom’s number, who read my texts for two weeks without telling me, in one box. And Chase, who’s just lost his own mom, in another. I’d forgotten they were one and the same.
I send him back the dead emoji—the one with the x on both eyes.
Chase: Did I kill you?
Maggie: With embarrassment
Chase: Sorry. Didn’t mean to embarrass you. So what happened to him?
I cover my eyes with one hand and try not to think about all the things that I told Chase. So many things. It was like he was reading my personal journal. Actually, that’s exactly what it was.
Chase: I’m waiting …
Maggie: You’re very pesky for someone I don’t really know.
Chase: What do you want to know?
Maggie: Do you like Star Wars?
Chase: Of course. But only the original three.
Ha! I was right about that. I wonder if I’m right about what he looks like. Lately I’ve been picturing him as a tall, lanky guy with brown hair. A bit like Benedict Cumberbatch. This could be my own manifestation of what I want him to look like, because I’m totally a Cumberbabe.
Chase: My last name is Beckett. There, you can stalk me on Insta. But I have to warn you, I don’t post a ton.
Chase: I’ll wait while you stalk me.
I smile at my phone again.
I open up Instagram and search for the name Chase Beckett. Ten names come up and I scroll through, wondering which one is him. I also feel a tingle of anxiousness travel down my spine. This whole situation is so unbelievably strange.
I scroll through the different profiles, narrowing down who I think the Chase Beckett I’ve been texting might be. There are a couple of young kids that I rule out, a guy with a man bun that I do a silent prayer is not him. There’s one guy standing with a yellow dog next to him. I can’t really see much of that guy, since the profile pictures on Instagram are so small and this one is zoomed out pretty far.
Maggie: Which one are you? There are like ten.
Chase: There’s a dog in my profile picture. A golden retriever.
I click on the Chase Beckett with the dog, and as it opens up I feel butterflies dance around in my stomach, almost not sure I want to look. I don’t even know why I feel this way. It’s just the reality of it all. I’m about to see what Chase looks like. I’ve had a picture in my head and I’m curious how he will match up.
“You really do suck at posting,” I say out loud to my empty living room.
There are maybe a dozen posts, and only half of them are pictures. The rest are quotes or memes. I scan over them and find another one of him and the dog and click on it, watching as it fil
ls up the screen.
The caption on the photo says: Me and Oscar.
Chase Beckett is a real person. I mean, of course I knew that. But that’s him, on my screen. He has a dark-brown, thick head of hair. I can’t really tell his eye color because of the lighting in the picture, but they look brown. He’s got a good smile—a genuine-looking one. He’s wearing a brown leather jacket over a white T-shirt and jeans. And he’s handsome. Definitely not a Benedict Cumberbatch look-alike with those broad shoulders under that leather jacket. Also not Dawson handsome, because no one else could be that good looking, but by all definitions—at least my own definitions—Chase is handsome.
I’m not sure how I feel about this.
My phone beeps in my hand.
Chase: You might be the slowest stalker ever.
Maggie: You have a dog?
Chase: Yep. Oscar. Best dog ever.
I click out of the picture of him and Oscar and scan over the other ones on his page, looking for more clues about him. I see one of a family and click on it. It’s his family. It has to be—they all look like they’re related. Same color hair, smiles that look like they go together.
I let my eyes focus on his mom. She looks so young for her age … if this was taken recently. She’s beautiful, with shoulder-length brown hair, curled in waves. She’s wearing a red sweater and jeans with knee-high black boots and standing next to a man that’s probably what future Chase will look like—it’s definitely his dad. Tall, like Chase, but lots of gray in that nice head of hair.
There’s a woman standing next to Chase—his sister, I’m assuming. It’s not hard to assume, they look so much alike.
Maggie: Your mom is beautiful
Chase: She is
Maggie: How old are you in that picture?
Chase: 28. We took it last year.
Maggie: Your sister? Older or younger?
Chase: Kenzie. She’s older by two years. She’s getting married next February.
Maggie: Oh wow. How is she doing?
Chase: About the same as me
He sends another poop emoji.
Maggie: My last name is Cooper
Chase: Let the REAL stalking begin!
Maggie: I’m the one in the pink baseball hat.
In my profile picture I’m wearing a Cooper’s hat, and it was my mom who took the photo. I’d just bought my Jeep and she snapped a picture of me through the open driver’s side window. The future felt big and bright then, my smile full and wide. I found it on her phone after she died and made it my profile picture.