Lydia Faraday had been a master gardener.
“Hey,” Rachel said in her bestGoodFellasvoice. “You don’t worry about me. I worry about you. Capisce?”
“I have friends,” Lucy said mildly.
“Well, according to Ann Steeler-Cox, you don’t have enough of them,” Rachel said, only half kidding. She’d spent the morning sequestered in Ann’s office at the Student Leadership Department, ostensibly to discuss Lucy’s issue in the bathroom. She’d had trouble concealing her growing dislike of the woman who burnished her last name like some badge of honor. Ann had a long narrow face that reminded Rachel of a perpetual finger wag, and a vacant smile that never quite touched her eyes.We just want to be sure that Lucy finds her place in our community,she’d said in a hushed kind of half whisper, as if they were discussing something shameful.It’s our responsibility to help her.As if there were something wrong with Lucy and not the girls who’d stripped her and shoved her sweatshirt in the toilet because of some stupid shark.
Still, it bothered Rachel that Lucy didn’t seem more upset about her showdown with the older girls or the fact that she’d been summoned out of class to meet with Mrs. Steeler-Cox and the vice principal. If anything, Lucy was in agoodmood. It had been her idea to eat outside—in our fairy circle,she’d said—and she hadn’t once complained that Rachel, the world’s most inept cook, had managed to scorch their frozen pizza. She’d even offered to make a salad, propping her iPhone on the counter, brow furrowed in concentration, following along to a YouTube video as she carefully measured vinegar into a tablespoon.
“Mrs. Steeler-Cox is a troll,” she said now.
“She’s just doing her job,” Rachel said, although she tended to agree.
“Her job is to get money for the swim team booster fund. It’s, like, her sole purpose in life. The Student Leadership Department is a scam. It’s just shellacking.”
“Who told you that?” Rachel asked.
Lucy shrugged. “No one told me,” she said. “It’s just a thing. Everybody knows.”
Everybody. The word dropped casually from Lucy’s mouth. For weeks the students at Woodward had been athey, as in,They all want me to join a stupid club.Or,They’re all freaking out because someone tried to steal their mascot.Occasionally singular identities bubbled out of the monolith—Akash and Olivia and, more recently, someone named Bailey Lawrence—but for the most part, Lucy had cast herself stubbornly apart, at least semantically.
Maybe, despite what Mrs. Steeler-Cox had said, things were changing. Rachel had noticed that Lucy picked up more friends recently on her Instagram. She’d even angled for a TikTok account again. So far Rachel had refused, and she continued to monitor the photos her daughter was posting, even though it made her feel like a helicopter parent. No selfies. No full-lengths.
Nothing she might later regret.
“Maybe we should make you a dating profile,” Lucy said, swiping pizza crust through the puddle of vinaigrette on her paper plate. “You’re not too old.” Then, squinting: “How old are you again?”
“Thirty-seven,” Rachel said.
“That’s definitely not too old,” Lucy said, although she sounded uncertain. “You’re not evenfortyyet.”
“I feel too old,” Rachel said. It was true. After the heartbreak with Alan, a collapse at the center of her adult life, and then all of the trouble at Lucy’s old school, Rachel felt like she’d broken across the terrible shores of midlife. Like she’d washed up in this remote corner of Indiana as wreckage. That’s why she was drawn to the Faraday House. She understood it.
“That’s just because you’re holed up here every day,” Lucy said. “You need to get out more. Meet people. People who are alive,” she added when Rachel began to protest. “And don’t work at the library.”
“We could join a church,” Rachel said teasingly, and Lucy made a face.
“I’m thinking of becoming Wiccan,” Lucy said. “Olivia Howard is Wiccan. She said my aura is orange.”
“Oh yeah?” Rachel remembered what the family therapist had told her about beingpresentfor Lucy. That meant trailing after the meandering course of her conversation. “And what color is my aura?”
Lucy held her hands up, making a picture frame with her hands, and squinted at her mother. “Sad,” she said finally. “Sad and worried about something.”
“Blue then,” Rachel said.
Lucy leaned across the table and grabbed Rachel’s phone. “Here. Let me take your picture. You’ll need them for Bumble.” Lucy giggled.
“And what kind of man should I be looking for?” Rachel asked as Lucy slid around the table to fuss with her hair.
“Ew, Mom. I don’tknow.”
Across the road, Rachel saw the doors to the Sandhus’ back door slide open. Akash drifted outside to fiddle with a garden hose. Rachel suspected from the deliberately casual and unnecessary errand that he was really looking for Lucy. It was the third time he’d drifted onto the back porch since they’d started eating. She saw him angle slightly in their direction and lifted a hand to wave. Let him know that he was busted. He ducked back inside, looking sheepish. Poor kid.
“I think Akash might have a crush on you,” Rachel said.
Lucy was still finger-combing Rachel’s hair, arranging it to spill over her shoulders. “He’s just a fussbucket,” Lucy said.
“A fussbucket?” Rachel repeated. She had no idea where Lucy picked up her lingo—half of it a patter of italicized slang, the other half pure Lucy. “And what’s he fussing about?”
