This Is What Happy Looks Like(63)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Where have you been?” she asked, setting down the pitcher. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Her eyes seemed to hold another question, but she didn’t ask it. Instead, she turned and peeled a star-spangled paper plate from the pile on the table. “Grab some food,” she said, handing it to Ellie. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

Ellie’s stomach grumbled as she filled her plate with huge spoonfuls of potato salad and macaroni, topping it off with a hot dog and a cupcake, and then she balanced a glass of lemonade in the crook of her arm and followed her mother across the green to where she’d laid out the same plaid blanket they used every year.

“Where’s Bagel?” Ellie asked, sitting cross-legged, the food spread out in front of her.

“I took him home after he stole his second hamburger.”

Ellie laughed, picking up her cupcake, which had a tiny flag drawn on top of the white frosting. “Have you been here all day?”

Mom didn’t answer. She settled down across from Ellie, holding her blue cup of lemonade with two hands. “Have you checked your phone at all?” she asked, her expression serious.

Ellie shook her head. “I lost it.” She knew what was coming next, and she knew what she should say, but somehow I’m sorry didn’t seem like nearly enough. She’d given away the secret that had run like a thread throughout their lives. And now the whole thing had unraveled in exactly the way that Mom had said it would, and there was nothing that Ellie could do to change it. Maybe it would help that the focus seemed to be on Graham, and maybe it wouldn’t. But she knew that wasn’t the point, and she swallowed hard as she waited for Mom to continue, still holding the cupcake in midair.

“What happened last night,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “with Graham and the photographer. You know that’s been in the news, right?”

Ellie couldn’t look at her, but she nodded, her eyes on the cupcake, the smudged corner of the little frosted flag. She didn’t know exactly how to answer, but a flood of words had welled up inside of her anyway, and she felt exhausted by the effort of holding them back.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, and then a lump rose in her throat, and the rest of it came out thick and choked. “It’s my fault. You told me this would happen, but I just couldn’t—I couldn’t help it. It’s not like I was seeing him this whole time. I stopped. But it was awful, not seeing him. I was completely miserable. And then it just happened again. But the thing with the photographer wasn’t really his fault. He was trying to keep them away from me, and they were horrible. Just like you said they’d be.”

She was half crying now, fueled as much by exhaustion as emotion. Mom was sitting across from her, watching the words tumble out with a strained expression, and Ellie couldn’t tell if it was anger or worry or something else entirely. She sucked in a breath of air before continuing. “It was awful,” she told her. “He had no choice. And this morning, they still hadn’t figured out that it was me who was with him, and I thought it would be okay, but now it’s obviously not, and I’m sorry. I know this is a huge mess, and I’ve probably ruined everything, but I didn’t mean to, and I’m just so, so sorry.”

For a moment, there was no reaction at all. Mom simply sat there, staring at Ellie, the untouched plates of food on the blanket between them. Then she leaned forward. “You haven’t ruined anything,” she said quietly, and Ellie opened her mouth to protest, but Mom shook her head. “Would I rather this hadn’t gotten out? Of course. It’s a chapter of my life that I’m not particularly proud of, and when I left D.C.—when I left your father—I felt like I was running away, which is never a good thing.”

She paused, looking thoughtful. The sky had darkened several shades, and the orange streetlamps that lined the edges of the green winked on behind her.

“But look what happened,” she said, sweeping an arm out. “We landed here. And much more important, I got you out of the deal. How could I ever regret that?”

Ellie bit her lip. She’d spent the day in search of her father, like Ahab going after the whale. But she realized now that she’d been on the wrong quest all along. In the end, she was much more like Dorothy. In the end, what she’d been searching for was simply this: home.

She lowered her eyes, wondering whether she should admit where she’d been today; it would be so easy to pretend it had never happened, to block out the memory of her father entirely. It was painful to think about even now, and talking about it—being forced to examine it and analyze it and argue about it—was the last thing she wanted.

But there’d been so many lies already—about Graham and about Harvard and about the boat—and this one was far too big to hide, far too important to keep quiet. She ducked her head, examining the forgotten plate of food.

“I saw him today,” she said quietly. She was about to continue, to say who she meant by him, but it was clear by the look on Mom’s face that this wasn’t necessary. She was sitting cross-legged across from Ellie, a paper plate with a cob of corn on her lap, and it rolled onto the blanket as she straightened, her whole body going tense. When she made no move to pick it up, Ellie reached out and did it herself, brushing off the fuzz from the blanket and then putting it back onto Mom’s plate with an apologetic shrug.

“You saw him?” she repeated, her eyes glassy.

“That’s where I was today.”

“In Kennebunkport?”

Ellie sat back, stunned. She hadn’t ever considered the fact that Mom might keep tabs on him too, follow his progress the same way Ellie always had. She’d always assumed they never spoke of him because Mom didn’t want to talk about it. But now, for the first time, she realized she might have been wrong. Maybe it was because she did want to talk about him; maybe all the silence was just a way to stanch the flow of memories like a bandage.

Maybe she left him all those years ago not because she hated him, but because she loved him.

After a moment, Ellie nodded. “Graham went up there with me,” she said, leaving out the part about the boat for now. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I just wanted to see him.”

Mom’s face was still oddly blank. “And you did?”

Ellie nodded again. “He was in town, meeting people for the campaign,” she said, and then, to her surprise, her voice broke. “He didn’t know it was me. He didn’t recognize me.”