We’d been lounging in their rec room for the last hour waiting on Kayla and Brynn. We were going to give each other pedicures while we watched a movie. The hours stretched out endlessly in front of me. I’d been obsessively checking the forum, but no one had answered back. I didn’t want to be here when they did. Not that I could do anything different at my house, but I really wanted to be there even if things were a mess.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Meredith asked when I got home the next morning. I’d been the first one to go to sleep last night and had sneaked out early before anyone else got up, eager to get home and check on things with Mom.

“What’s up?” I asked, setting my backpack down in the entryway.

“I just wanted to talk to you about everything that’s been going on lately and see how you were feeling. Answer any questions you might have.”

I peeked behind her, scanning the living room and kitchen. “Is Dad here?”

“No.”

We didn’t have heart-to-hearts without Dad. She’d tried that when they’d first started dating, because she had probably read it in one of her self-help books or her therapist had suggested it. Either way, she had been convinced we needed to go on individual dates to get to know each other. We had gone to the zoo a bunch of times, and we had walked through the botanical gardens over on Mulberry. Sometimes we had gone out for ice cream. But it had never mattered where we went or what we did; things had never stopped feeling like we were on an awkward first date. Dad had balanced us out in a way we couldn’t do ourselves when he wasn’t around. She had been more relieved than anything when we’d stopped doing them, even though she had pretended to be hurt.

“Is he coming home soon?” I asked.

She shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “He should be here in a little while.”

“Do you want to text me when he’s here?” I asked, bending down to scoop up my backpack and head upstairs.

“I thought the two of us could talk. He doesn’t need to be here for this.”

Alarm bells went off inside me as I followed her into the kitchen. She sat down at the window seat. “Have you and your mother still been hanging out at night?”

I nodded.

“What do you guys do in there?”

I shrugged. “Hang out. Talk. Nothing really.”

“What kinds of things do you talk about?”

She tried to ask it like she didn’t care, but Meredith was a terrible liar. Where was this going? Why did I feel like I was on trial?