Page 42 of The Apparent Trap

“You haven’t asked him?”

A thought flashes through my mind: I don’t have any real friends left who knew my mom. I don’t have any friends who would really understand how strange it would be seeing my dad with someone else because they’d seen that love. As an only child, I’m the only keeper of those memories now . . .

As much as I love Georgia, as much as she’s my closest friend . . . she can never understand the warmth of my mother’s smile.

She can never understand why it would hurt to ask him details about a new relationship, even if that’s an unfair standard.

There’s a sadness with that acknowledgment that wraps around my heart like a tendril.

But I have to shake it off. It’s always my only choice when grief unwillingly surfaces.

“You think I should ask him about how they got together?”

“If not your dad, then at least Carmen would owe you that,” she says with a shrug.

“You think I should just be like, Hey, Carm, you tell me nothing about your life ever, but can I ask, Did you want to bone my dad right when you met him, or did that develop once you had a drink and the lighting was a little dark?”

Georgia doubles over, and I can’t tell if she’s laughing or pretending to retch. “Okay, you took it too far,” she says, the laughter apparent even through the dramatics.

“I have to joke or I’ll spiral.”

“Fair,” Georgia says, accepting my need without question. “So what are you going to do?”

I pick up a LEGO to fiddle with. “I mean, I can’t actually say anything to either of them for so many reasons.”

“Agree.” There’s comfort in knowing Georgia at least sees all that backstory without me having to say it.

“But I guess I’m just trying to make them understand that they’re in different phases of their lives without being completely obvious that I’m doing that.” I look down, because I don’t want Georgia to see that I’m leaving anything out. I’m hoping everything she’s just learned was so shocking that she’ll assume any weirdness is about that.

I hate that I can’t talk to Georgia about everything with Lee—but there’s no version of explaining my confusion around him without giving away the one piece of information I know I can’t. So that part has to stay confusing in private.

“That’s it?” Georgia asks.

“You just agreed that I can’t actually come out and tell them not to date.”

“Well obviously,” she says. “They wouldn’t listen anyway. Everyone reverts to being toddlers when someone tells them what to do.” She sits back and thinks. “You need to put her in a situation where she has to talk about age gaps somehow. Oooh, do a segment on it!”

“Oh okay, great idea. Because if I set up a segment with some health expert about the highly specific and not-newsworthy topic of age gaps, she totally won’t then think I’m trying to break her and my dad up. Great plan. Totally flawless and not at all one where I’m going to look like an asshole.”

I expect Georgia to look cowed, but instead I can see the wheels turning. “Wait, you’re right,” Georgia exclaims. “You can’t say anything.”

“I know,” I say with a smirk. “Thanks for repeating what I already said.”

“No, no,” she continues. “I’m actually brilliant.”

“And you’re so humble too.”

She ignores me. “I can bring it up. Jenny’s out in a couple weeks, and I know the higher-ups will be thrilled if I offer to sit in on the third hour.”

“You’re going to take on extra exhausting work just to try and subterfuge my dad’s relationship?”

“To help a man I care very much about, yes.” She says it so matter-of-factly that my breath hitches. Georgia’s loyalty to me shouldn’t feel surprising, and it’s not. I know if I ever asked her for anything, she’d say yes, but that’s never been who I am. I’m happy to stay in the back and do what needs to get done. And yet, since I don’t ask for help, I’m always still taken aback when Georgia intuits it anyway. She interprets my unspoken words before I can even decide not to say them.

I still have a hard time saying yes, though. “I appreciate you wanting to help, George—”

“Save it. I’m doing this. I’m making a plan, and I’m not going to tell you about it so you have total plausible deniability.” My stomach flips, thinking of Lee. Look how that solo adventure into meddling turned out. “This is clearly stressing you out. So let me try and help you?”

“I don’t want him to get hurt,” I say quietly. “I’m stuck in an impossible place where if this keeps going, he will get hurt—by her, when they’re too deep in and their age becomes untenable and she dumps him; or I worry about like . . . what happens if some tabloid or media catches on, and it becomes a story where they both look bad. She’s not used to being high profile. And everyone loves judging media figures.”