Chapter 7: What Stays and What Goes
The green dress came back three days later.
Jordan dropped it off in a bag with Maddie's clutch and her earrings.
She stood on the porch for a minute talking to Maddie through the screen door, and I watched from the kitchen without meaning to.
I couldn't hear what they were saying.
But at one point Jordan said something and Maddie laughed — a real laugh, short and surprised — and I turned back to the sink before either of them could catch me watching.
That laugh did something to my chest.
That evening Maddie came downstairs and sat at the kitchen table while I made dinner.
She didn't say anything for a while.
Just sat there with her feet tucked under her on the chair, scrolling through her phone, occasionally showing me something that had nothing to do with Tyler or prom or any of it.
After a while she said, without looking up: "Jordan wants me to come to her cousin's thing next weekend.
A cookout."
"Do you want to go?"
"Maybe." She set her phone down.
"Tyler's going to be there."
I kept stirring.
"Does Jordan know that?"
"Yeah.
She said she'd understand if I didn't come.
But she also said—" Maddie paused.
"She said Tyler's been pretty quiet this week.
That he's not doing great."
I didn't say anything.
"I don't feel sorry for him," Maddie said.
"I want to be clear about that.
I'm not sitting here feeling sorry for him."
"Okay."
"But I also don't — " She picked at the edge of the table.
"I don't want to hate him either.
I don't want to spend the whole summer being angry.
It's exhausting."
"That sounds like a reasonable thing to feel."
"Jordan said Cassidy stopped responding to him the same night as prom.
After she sent me that message." Maddie looked up.
"She just — stopped.
Cut it off completely."
I turned around.
"How do you feel about that?"
Maddie thought about it.
"Honestly?
I respect it." She said it like it surprised her a little.
"She didn't have to message me.
She could have just disappeared and let Tyler handle it.
But she didn't."
"No," I said.
"She didn't."
Maddie was quiet for a moment.
"I'm not going to be her friend or anything.
But I don't think she's the villain in this."
"I don't think she is either."
"Tyler's the one who made promises to both of us," she said.
"He's the one who kept choosing to not choose."
I sat down across from her.
"When did you get so clear-headed about all of this?"
She looked at me.
"I've had a weird week."
I laughed.
She smiled — the real kind, the one that reaches her eyes.
"Mom," she said.
"Yeah."
"I'm okay.
I want you to actually believe that, not just hope it."
"I'm working on it."
"I know you are." She reached across and tapped the back of my hand once.
"I saw you watching from the kitchen when Jordan was here."
I didn't deny it.
"I'm okay," she said again.
Quieter this time.
"It hurts.
But I'm okay."
I covered her hand with mine.
We sat like that for a minute, the two of us at the kitchen table with dinner going on the stove, and I thought about the porch light I'd left on four nights ago.
About the car door I hadn't recognized.
About the eight seconds she'd stood with her back to me at the bottom of the stairs.
She'd been protecting herself that night.
Not from me — from the moment.
From having to say it out loud before she'd had a chance to feel it first.
I understood that now.
"Go to the cookout," I said.
She looked up.
"If you want to.
Don't go for Tyler.
Don't go to prove anything.
Go because Jordan is a good friend and it's summer and you're seventeen and you're allowed to have a good time."
Maddie considered this.
"Yeah," she said finally.
"Okay."
She went.
The following Saturday.
Jordan picked her up at noon.
She came home at six with sunburned shoulders and sand in her shoes, talking about a volleyball game she'd apparently won and a dog that had stolen someone's burger, and Tyler's name didn't come up once.
May you like
Not once.
I didn't ask.
