“Yours is real. You looked deep in thought, so I thought you might need it.”
“Thanks.” I sighed. “I do.”
She sat down at the other end of the couch and tucked her legs underneath her. “So what’s going on that you’re staring at the TV and don’t even know it’s not on?”
I smiled. My sister knew me so well. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just overthinking things.”
She sipped her faux wine and wrinkled her nose.
“Not good?” I asked.
“You know when you leave an open bottle of wine around for a few months, and then you want to have a glass of wine and that’s the only shit you have left?”
I chuckled. “Sadly, I do.”
“It tastes like that.”
“It’s going to be a long nine months,” I said.
“You ain’t kidding.” She sipped anyway. “But talk to me. What are you overthinking?”
I sighed. “Well, today Merrick and I went shopping for my new apartment. When we were in line at HomeGoods, there was a little girl in the cart ahead of us. Merrick kept staring at her. It seemed like he recognized her or something, and then he abruptly said he was going to wait in the car.”
“Okay…”
“The little girl was with her dad, and he looked a little freaked out too, so after Merrick left, I asked him if they knew each other. Turns out, the little girl is his ex’s daughter. Merrick told me Amelia had cheated on him, and he found out when she had her accident. But the little girl wasn’t even three, and I could’ve sworn Merrick said Amelia died around three years ago.”
“Hmmmm... Could you have gotten the timeline wrong?”
“Maybe. But what’s bugging me is how Merrick acted afterward.”
“How did he act?”
“He barely spoke and then just dropped me off here. I didn’t even have my bag with me.”
“So seeing the little girl upset him?”
“That’s what it seems like. Maybe I’m overreacting, but it felt like the thirty-second exchange they had rewound the clock on our relationship.”
“I do think you’re reading into it. It was probably just an emotional reminder of a hard time. Things like that can pack a punch if they’re thrown at you when you least expect it.”
“Yeah, I guess…”
“Do you know Amelia’s last name?”
I nodded. “Evans. Why?”
Greer picked up her phone. “You said she died in a plane crash, right?”
“Yeah.”
“There must’ve been some press coverage.” She shrugged. “Let’s Google.”
Before I could reconcile why googling a dead ex felt wrong, my sister turned the phone to show me a headline.
“Woman survives crash during flight training. She didn’t die on impact?”
“I don’t know all the details, but no.”