Landline(65)

Her mom made Georgie come out to the living room Christmas morning to watch Heather open her presents. Heather was three, just old enough to understand that everything under the tree was for her. Georgie sat on the couch in flannel pajama pants and a ratty T-shirt, and ate pancakes with her fingers.

Kendrick was there. He was still new then. He brought Georgie a movie-theater gift certificate with a bow on it. Heather got a talking Teletubby, which she was currently spazzing out over.

He—Kendrick, not the Teletubby—kept trying to talk to Georgie, and he was trying so hard, Georgie didn’t have the heart to ignore him. (But she didn’t have any heart at all, so that made conversation difficult.) When the doorbell rang, Kendrick jumped up to answer it, probably just to get away from Georgie.

“It’s your friend Neal,” he said when he came back to the living room.

“You mean Seth,” she said.

Kendrick scratched his goatee—he used to have a ridiculous goatee—“Neal’s the little one, right?”

Georgie set down her plate and got off the couch.

“Why didn’t you invite him in?” her mom asked Kendrick.

“He said he’d rather wait outside.”

Georgie didn’t believe it was Neal. She couldn’t believe it was Neal. First of all, because Neal was in Omaha—he wouldn’t have skipped Christmas in Omaha. And second, because they were broken up. And third, because if Georgie did believe it was Neal, and then it turned out that it wasn’t? That might be it. That might finish her.

The front door was still open when she got there.

Neal was standing on the other side of the screen, biting his lip and squinting up her block, like he was waiting for her to come from the other direction.

Neal.

Neal, Neal, Neal.

Georgie’s hand trembled as she pushed the screen door open.

Neal turned to her, and his eyes got wide. Almost like he hadn’t let himself believe it was really going to be her.

He took a step back, so Georgie stepped out onto the front porch. She wanted to grab him. (It was probably safe to grab him—Neal probably hadn’t come to her house on Christmas morning just to break up with her extra hard, right? He wouldn’t have come back just to tell her he was leaving?)

Neal’s eyes were thin, and his face was tight. He looked like she was still hurting him. “Georgie,” he said.

Georgie started crying instantly. From zero to eleven. “Neal.”

Neal shook his head, and she jerked forward to hug him. Even if he had come just to make sure she knew they were really over, Georgie was going to get one more desperate embrace out of this.

His arms came around her shoulders, and he held her so tight, they rocked back and forth. “Georgie,” Neal said, then started pulling away.

She didn’t let him.

“Georgie,” he said, “wait.”

“No.”

“Yes. Wait. I need to do something.”

She still didn’t let go; Neal had to unwind her arms and take a step back.

As soon as he was away, he dropped to one knee. Georgie thought maybe he was going to apologize, that he was falling at her feet. “No,” she said, “you don’t have to.”

“Shhh. Just let me do this.”

“Neal . . .”

“Georgie, please.”

She folded her arms and looked miserable. She didn’t want him to say he was sorry. That would take them right back into the heart of their sorry situation.

“Georgie,” he said. “I love you. I love you more than I hate everything else. We’ll make our own enough—will you marry me?”



Georgie stopped, in the middle of fastening a bra behind her back, and turned to face herself in the dressing room mirror.

Oh . . .





CHAPTER 22


Christmas.

On one knee.

Looking straight through her.

“We’ll make our own enough,” he’d said.

Last night on the telephone, Georgie had asked Neal if love was enough.

And fifteen years ago, he’d answered her.

Was that . . . could it just be a coincidence?

Or did it mean . . .

That it had already happened.

That this—all of this, the phone calls, the fighting, the four-hour conversations—had already happened. For Neal. Fifteen years ago.

What if Georgie wasn’t disrupting the timeline with these phone calls—what if this was the timeline? What if it had been the timeline all along?

“We’ll make our own enough,” Neal had said that day at her door.

Georgie remembered him saying it, remembered that it sounded nice—but all she was focused on at the time was the ring in his hand.

Could it be that Neal was referring to a conversation he’d thought she was a part of?

“What if it isn’t enough?” Georgie asked him last night.

“We’ll make our own enough,” he promised her in 1998. “Will you marry me?”





CHAPTER 23


“Oh.”

Georgie gaped at herself in the mirror. “Oh my God,” she gasped.

“It can’t be that bad,” Heather said from outside the fitting room. “You’re not even forty.”