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“Nope.” To chase away the discomfort, Katie stabbed two bites of enchilada to make a perfect enchilada and crema sandwich. “I didn’t. I just wanted to spend all of my time with her.”
“Did you figure this out because of how you’re feeling about her now?”
It was the worry, Katie realized, that created a small flare of irritation every time her mom talked about anyone new in her life. “Not exactly. I was mostly so happy to understand that Ben wasn’t my first love.”
Her mom blinked, hard. Then she turned away, reaching up to swipe her face with her hands, and got out of her chair to begin unloading the dishwasher. It was Midwest for,That is as much as I can talk about this right now.
Katie smoothed her hand over the frustration in her throat. She wasn’t even sure where she was going with this conversation except that she didn’t want to feel like her life was a twenty-four-hour vigil against crisis.
She looked out the arched window opposite the kitchen. The house sat on a broad expanse of lawn with a beautiful wrought-iron fence around the property. Her parents hadn’t wanted to move. They’d already had their forever home, the cozy two-story stucco they’d bought when Katie was a baby, but Katie’s celebrity had made it unsafe for them to live so close to their neighbors, and now they had this beautiful fortress with an unlisted address and a state-of-the-art security system.
She wanted to be proud that she’d been able to earn this beautiful house, the green lawn and the patch of woods in the back thather dad liked to walk around in, but it was hard for Katie to think about the house without thinking about it as something her fame had done to her parents.
It was hard not to think about Ben as something she’d done to her parents.
“I know Beanie so well,” Diana said apologetically. “I can’t pretend not to know that Beanie’s been worried about Wil. She was so close to her dad. Did you know she put off getting the genetic testing to find out if she has Huntington’s until this year?”
Katie shook her head, her heart turning to ice so fast, she had to push against her chest to ease how sharp it was. “Does she?”
“No.” Diana’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “But it was fifty-fifty if she would turn out to have it. You know that Beanie and Jasper didn’t know Jasper had it when Beanie got pregnant with Wil?”
Katie nodded. “I think so.”
“Jasper’s mother had him young, and she still wasn’t showing symptoms when Jasper and Beanie were married. Her symptoms came on late and took her down pretty quickly. They didn’t have the genetic test for Huntington’s yet, so it was a big surprise. If Beanie and Jasper had known, they wouldn’t have had Wil. But they did have Wil, and then the testing became available, but Wil didn’twantto know. She really, really didn’t. I think she felt that it honored her dad somehow. Or she was very scared. I can’t pretend to understand what a decision like that means to a person. Beanie had to beg her, finally.”
Katie wrapped her arms around herself. She thought of Wil’s list, and of Beanie helping with it. Of Wil staying here, not moving on. Not going to one of the best law schools in the country.
Wil wasn’t stuck. She literally hadn’t known if she had real choices to make.
Huntington’s was 100 percent fatal and completely, completelyawful. Symptoms usually showed up in people’s late twenties or early thirties, and then they had ten years left, fifteen at the outside. Katie had done a few campaigns, lending her face and her celebrity presence to fund-raising efforts that Beanie told Diana could make a difference.
But Wil hadn’t been tested until recently. Sometime around when she started her stranger-kissing TikTok.
All of which meant that right now was maybe the very first time Wilcouldmake choices, or that she felt like she could.
Katie’s life, how she had to live, took away a lot of choices.
Diana broke the silence. “I was just thinking that Beanie and I are really good moms,” she said. “I have been telling myself to trust, because both you and Wil are lovely people, and the kind of people who will make good decisions. One of the things that always feels the best to hear as a mom, and that moms hear the least, is just, ‘You’re a good mom.’ A long time ago, I figured out that I needed to remember to tell myself that. It’s a powerful thing to hear. It’s a powerful thing to say. Especially when you have a child who is interesting, exceptional. Like both you and Wil are. When you’re a mom who has kids like you and Wil, there’s a way that you never feel like you’re doing the right thing. But Beanie is such a good mother. And so am I.”
Katie rubbed her hands over her knees, then admitted the thing she’d been trying to avoid thinking, even to herself. “I don’t know if what I want is good for Wil right now.”
Her mom closed the dishwasher and looked at her with kindness in her eyes.
Katie was glad she’d see Wil soon. She needed to, and that was an old feeling she understood. She knew that as soon as she saw Wil, she’d be a little less afraid.
For a little while, maybe it could just be Katie and Wil.
Chapter Seven
Wil walked into Kettle’s, wrinkling her nose at the hit of Lysol and coffee that permeated the used bookstore–slash–coffee shop, the mainstay of an awkward neighborhood between downtown and an industrial drag.
Kettle’s had carved out a clientele in Green Bay as the default meeting place of the sixty-and-over set, as well as professionals who didn’t want to run into anyone they knew, deal with ambient noise, or face a lot of choices about what to eat or drink.
There weren’t any customers in the front area, and the ageless brown-haired barista who had worked at Kettle’s since Wil used to walk here from East High after school when Beanie couldn’t pick her up until five was sitting on a stool behind the counter reading what looked like the Bible, though Wil very sincerely hoped not.
As soon as Wil made it to the counter, she spied the reason she’d come—a couple of tables pushed together with four local attorneys gathered around, their heads bent, talking seriously to each other.
“What can I get you?” the barista asked, putting down her book.