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About a year ago
, Johnson Company did a total software overhaul. Our new email program took its cue from Facebook. Everyone in the system now had a user profile that included a picture and a mini-bio that popped up on the side of the page if you clicked on their contact information or emailed them.

My name is Jeff Manning. I like sunsets and kittens and …

It was meant to foster “inter-office collegiality” or some such bullshit. As far as I could tell, it was mainly an opportunity for voyeurism and ridicule, particularly for the people—almost always women, almost always of a certain age—who took the whole thing too seriously. They’d strike “alluring” poses with their faces tilted to the side, their hair salon-perfect, and post bios full of their likes and dislikes. If they were stupid enough to mention their cats — or, God forbid, pose with one of them—they were done for.

I don’t know if it was spite, boredom, or low-level rebellion, but the minute the site went live, there was a small but persistent group — almost always men, almost always of a certain age—who started compiling lists.

Top Ten Most Likely to Have Their Corpse Eaten by Their Cats. Top Ten Trying Too Hard. Top Ten MILFs. And so on. If you can think of it, the list existed. While some of them were funny, those of us “lucky” enough to be management had the distinctly unfun task of trying to discover the perpetrators so they could be disciplined.

And that’s how I re-met Tish.

When a particularly nasty list went around—Top Ten Facial Blemishes That Ought to Be Taken Care of Immediately—I actually felt motivated to find the culprit. My own assistant was on it, and the mole on her chin wasn’t that bad, really. I had a pretty good idea who the perpetrator was, a junior accountant named Evan. Since he was someone I’d been wishing I had something on for a while—he was a dick of the highest order, and marginally competent to boot—I did some skulking around and got the proof I needed.

My boss, Gerry, was all for firing him, so he took it upstairs and came back with the okay to give him the axe. An “example had to be set,” and guess who got to set it?

Yessir.

Gerry suggested I get some HR training before I did the deed, something about protecting us from liability if Evan went postal.

“I’ve found Tish from the other Springfield helpful. Plus, she’s number 5 on—”

I held up my hand. “Don’t say it. Then I’ll have to report you too.”

“Good luck with that.”

He did one of those high school bird-flipping manoeuvres that turned into rubbing the side of his nose before snickering his way out of my office.

I’m pretty sure Gerry’s the origin of more than one list.

I almost called after him to ask “Tish who?” but it occurred to me that Tish was a pretty unusual name. There probably weren’t two people named Tish in the HR department in the other Springfield.

So it proved. A couple clicks of the keyboard brought me to the contact page of Tish Underhill—real name Patricia—and I couldn’t keep my face from breaking into a grin.

I’d thought of her occasionally since that chance meeting in the food line. Fleeting thoughts, mostly when HR got mentioned, but I’d never made any effort to find her. Because what was the point? She’d made it fairly clear that she didn’t want to be found …

But when I pulled up her contact information, I admit I spent a long time studying it, her picture in particular. Not because she looked great in it—okay, not
only
because she looked great in it—but because of the whole attitude of the thing. Her dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, like she’d just released it from an elastic, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She held her chin in her hand, a pose I usually would’ve found derisible, but in her case, it gave off the perfect mix of ease and I-don’t-give-a-fuck. This is me, her picture said, love it or hate it.

I loved it, and found myself looking at it whenever I had an idle moment.

I may have had a lot of idle moments.

I also loved what she wrote in her profile. No embellishments
or waxing eloquent about her pets. She was married, she had a daughter, she loved reading and golf.

It was, in fact, nearly word for word what I wrote in my own biography, which I’d left till the last minute and dashed off without any thought. Maybe that’s what she’d done too. Whatever it was — our strange first conversation, the similarity of our thought process—I felt a sense of kinship with her.

If I’m being honest, it took me a few days to work up the courage to contact her. But like all things, it had to be done some time. There was a firing to do, after all, and so I opened her contact page, glanced at her now familiar picture, discarded the mental drafts I’d composed, and wrote:

Patricia
,

Not sure if you remember me, but we met a while back at that company retreat in Mexico. I was the guy who completely embarrassed himself in the food line. “You schooled that flagpole” is a line that’s been haunting me for a while
.

Anyway, I have an HR situation I need a consult on. Can we hop on the line when you have a chance?

Best
,

Jeff Manning

I hit Send without reading it through, feeling like I’d asked her on a date. Which was ridiculous. Ridiculous.

Ping!

There was a reply from her in my inbox.

Jeff
,

Please call me Tish. And how could I forget your knight in shining armour act on the driving range? If you hadn’t dragged that guy away, there might’ve been a homicide
.
Besides, I
was
trying to school that thing, so no need to be haunted, if you were
.

Hop on whenever you’d like
.

Tish

A slight pause and then,

Tish
,

Hop on now?

Jeff

Seconds later,

Hop away
.

I glanced at her phone number and dialled it. My fingers felt shaky and I kept clearing my throat, like I had a cold coming on, which I didn’t.

Ring, ring
.

“Jeff,” she said, a laugh in her voice. “What took you so long?”

I wake on Thursday feeling something
, some measure, like myself. I have a bit of that thumping energy I get, the will to do something, something, I always have to be doing something. I want to leave the house so badly I wish I had somewhere to go to like Seth does. School, I want to go to school I realize as I’m eating my sugar-coated breakfast while trying to ignore the never-ending flow of my parents’ bickering. And I have a school to go to. My school.

With Beth’s encouragement and over my mother’s halfhearted protests, I shower, dress, make an attempt to arrange my hair, and walk to Playthings. The day promises glorious and the trees are greening. Life, it all screams. Life.

Driving’s still out of the question, but I leave the funeral pills behind. They make me too fuzzy, too lizard-brained, and if my mind’s now full of racing thoughts, at least they aren’t only about Jeff. The slow-motion slideshow of our life together that seems to wend endlessly through my brain has
small commercial breaks.
We need some better food in the house. Seth should get a haircut. Is there any chance I might convince Beth to move home and, possibly, in with us?

It turns out that Playthings is exactly what I need. Not the work, or the bills waiting for my attention, or the lease that needs renegotiating, but the kids. When I enter the building and breathe in the familiar smell of fruit-based children’s snacks and papier-mâché materials, I decide to bypass my office and the red light I can see on my desk phone blinking
message, message, message
and head right for the primary colours.

I feel the strange looks aimed my way from some of the staff, but none of them try to dissuade me. The tiny little children don’t know any better. They have a new big person to pay attention to them; all’s right in their me, me, me world.

I play blocks, I read the same story about Thomas the Tank Engine (go,
Thomas, go, Thomas, go go go
) more times than I can count. I roll around on the floor and let the boys take out their aggression by pouncing on me with squeals of delight. I plunk out a few tunes on the child-sized piano, all off-chords and tinny sounds. When snack time arrives, I scoot around the low plastic table, scooping little Ruby Adams into my lap. We share a cut-up apple, some grapes, and a handful of Goldfish.

We play a game with the fish-shaped crackers, pretending they’re swimming in an imaginary sea. After snack comes nap time, and I’m as ready for it as the children are. Ruby pats the space next to her with her slightly yellowed fingers, and I tuck a plush toy under my head.

As I start to drift, the feel of the plastic mat underneath me knocks a new memory into my brain. And as much as I don’t want to think about it, I fall asleep to thoughts of the last time I was on a mat in this room, and with whom.

I leave Playthings before the parents start arriving for pickup, wanting to avoid the uncomfortable conversations that are sure to ensue. Like the messages from my friends I keep on ignoring,
I’ll leave it till tomorrow
I think, then think it again the next day.

The air outside is cooler than when I arrived. April’s been fooling us these last few weeks into believing it’s spring, but winter isn’t quite ready to give up its grip. I double over the front of my light coat, holding it tight against my body with my hands thrust in my pockets, and walk as quickly as I can.

It’s fully dark by the time I get home. I can see small puffs of my breath in the glow from the street lamps. When I turn up the front walk, Beth’s sitting on the front porch in my winter parka, waiting, I assume, for me.

“Hey,” she says, looking up from her iPad.

It’s open to her work email, which is full of red-exclamation-mark-important messages.

Beth’s a partner in a swanky big-city firm located a thousand miles away from here. She’d wanted to leave Springfield as long as I can remember. It was how she started most of her sentences growing up when we were out of our parents’ hearing.

“When I get out of here …”

I never quite understood what it was that drove her. She’s always been really close with our father, his favourite ever since she declared at ten that she wanted to be a lawyer like him. It was she who spent her summers working in the filing room, running documents to court, learning how to do easy research mandates. He even had “James & James” business cards made up when she got into law school.

But she was determined. And when she went first to college as far away as possible, and then to law school even farther away than that, I watched my father’s heart crack at the realization that what he’d always taken as a given wasn’t going to happen.

A few days after she’d called to say she’d accepted a job at a fancy West Coast firm that subsisted on sunshine and movie stars, I found him sitting in his study with the box of business cards in his hands. He looked so lost I found myself saying something I wasn’t even sure was true.

“I’m going to be a lawyer, Dad. I’ve decided.”

He looked up, startled, clearly having been unaware of my presence until I spoke. “That’s nice, dear.”

“No, I mean it. Really. And I want to come back, I … want to work with you.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

He looked at me for a moment, like he was puzzling something out. “I always thought … are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, I guess I’ll keep these then,” he said, patting the box.

When I turned to leave, I heard him slide open the drawer to his desk, the one that squeaked, his discard drawer where old papers he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw away went to live their lives in rarely disturbed seclusion. The box thunked onto the stack of brittle papers, and I imagined the dust motes floating up to tickle my father’s nose. That he’d placed the cards in that particular drawer told me he didn’t believe me, despite what he said.

And as he sneezed a mighty sneeze, I thought,
you’ll see, Dad. You’ll see
.

So Beth left and I stayed. She makes it home about twice a year, if we’re lucky. She had a brief, disastrous marriage to a guy I never really got to know, which ended when he cheated on her, and since the divorce, I’ve heard little of her dating life. I wonder sometimes if she’s lonely, but it isn’t the sort of thing we ask in our family, or admit to.

“Has the firm collapsed since you’ve been gone?” I ask.

“It spins on without me.”

“Then why do you look so serious?”

She shrugs. “How was Playthings? Still standing without
you
, or have the kids torn it down brick by brick?”

I take a seat next to her on the porch. The wood releases its stored-up cold.

“It was good, really good, actually, and it’s still standing. But why did you change the subject?”

Her email pings. She frowns at the screen, which casts a greenish glow on her skin.

“Did I?”

“Yeah, you did. What gives?”

She types as she talks, her fingers moving in a practised way across the screen. “Nothing. Did you want to go out for dinner? How about Joe’s? I haven’t been there in ages.” She hits Send, folds the cover over the screen, and stands up. “Do you mind if we go now? I’m starving.”

“What about Seth?”

“He’s having dinner at a friend’s.”

“Who authorized that? Which friend?”

“I did. Carter someone. I thought it was a good sign. Hope that’s okay.”

“I suppose so.”

“We good to go, then?”

I feel a knot of annoyance at the Seth thing, but it doesn’t distract me from the fact that Beth seems awfully anxious to leave. Not that I can blame her. Our parents are probably in the house squabbling over the remote, or something else equally inane.

But still.

“Do you mind if I change first? I smell like Play-Doh.”

“It’s fine for Joe’s.”

I stand up. Even in flats, Beth’s a head taller than me. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing. I’m hungry. You know how I get when I don’t eat.”

“Well, your stomach’s going to have to cool it for a minute, because I need to pee.”

She lurches so she’s standing between me and the front door.

“Okay, seriously now, Bethie. What the hell?”

She breathes in and out deeply, steeling herself for something. “Tim’s in there.”

“Oh, is that—” I stop and search her face for some explanation. “I mean, of course he’s here. I knew that. We knew that. Today’s Thursday, right? So what’s the big deal?”

“What’s the big deal? Come on, Claire.”

The knot of annoyance grows. Or maybe it’s a knot of something else.

“That’s all past. It’s in the past.”

“Is it?”

“Of course. Jesus. Jeff just—”

She put her hands on my shoulders, pulling me close. I can smell her citrusy shampoo. It feels too close for comfort.

“I know, Claire.
I know
.”

“I’m going to have to see him sometime.”

“I know that too.”

“So?”

“I thought …”

I take a step back. “You really think the worst of me, don’t you?”

“No, of course not. I was just … I don’t know what I was trying to do. I was being stupid, okay? Forgive me?”

I meet her eyes, a clearer, lighter version of my own. “Do
you
forgive
me?
I mean, really forgive. Not lip service.”

Her hesitation speaks for her.

I turn away.

“That’s what I thought.”

I walk to the front door and stop with my hand on the knob. “He forgave me, you know.”

“Do you mean Jeff, or Tim?”

I shoot her a look and enter the house. The heat is turned up higher than we normally keep it, and I can hear the murmur of voices in the living room. My parents’ voices mixed with a deeper one, only slightly less familiar. A voice from the echoey past.

As I take off my coat, sadness replaces it, a tight fit. It makes walking towards the living room harder, even though I can’t help myself from doing so.

When I reach the doorway, there they all are. My parents, sitting on the loveseat, forced closer together than they ever are in real life. Tim, in the wingback chair no one sits in, not ever. His face is tanned and wrinkled from the sun. He’s wearing chinos, a white T-shirt, and a chunky steel watch on his wrist. His left hand rests casually on the chair arm. His fingers are long, thin, and bare.

I stand there silently, watching, listening to the tone of the talk rather than the substance.

My mother senses my presence first. “Why, Claire. How long have you been standing there?”

Tim reacts like an electric shock’s passed through him, or the shiver of a ghost.

“Not long.”

“Tim’s here,” she says.

“I see that.”

Tim stands at the sound of his name, so quickly the chair tips backwards and almost over before righting itself in the deep impressions it’s left in the carpet.

We stare at each other for a moment before he walks towards me, quick and certain. He takes me in his arms, pressing my face to his chest. He smells of salt and an aftershave I don’t recognize.

“I’m so terribly sorry, Claire,” he says.

Then he releases me and leaves.