Page 12 of The Ripple Effect

5:41

Good morning my loves! Three days old today! Sending you good vibes from beautiful Love Boat HQ, wish you were here

5:41

I hope you’re sleeping instead of replying to texts

5:42

You never have to answer, btw! I’ll text every day and you can reply when you have a minute and an extra hand. So I guess I’ll hear from you when Jess is hitting puberty

I met baby Jess on Tuesday. McHuge had to pick me up from the apartment because Tobin’s truck was still at camp. We made a detour to Grey Tusk General—an hour and a half we couldn’t really afford, given how much work there is—to visit the new family.

McHuge handed Tobin some healthy prepared meals and nonlatex balloons, then gave me side-eye when I slipped Liz a six-pack of tiny bottles of champagne. I stand by my choice. I took care of countless new parents at the hospital, plus I’ve delivered a lot of takeout to people with bad hair wearing bathrobes covered in spit-up. They’re relieved to get the meals, but it’s the booze that makes tears of gratitude well up in their purple-shadowed eyes.

Holding my best friend’s baby with her new smell and her squeaky little cry was the closest I’ve come to crying myself in I don’t know how long. Despite how exhausted they looked, Liz and Tobin seemed somehow forged into a single Borg consciousness by this experience. Watching them together reinforced the rightness of what I’m doing.

If I’m not the person Liz needs, then I’ll give her the person who is.

It’s what a sister would do. I think. As we were leaving, Liz’s actual sister, Amber, arrived with an arsenal of snap containers filled with precut fruit and vegetables and a liter of chocolate milk nestled in a bucket of ice. “Trust me,” Amber said. “It’s what you need, even if you don’t know it yet.”

Since I’ve known Liz, she’s never been as close to Amber as we’ve been to each other. But now Amber and Liz are both parents, members of a club I can’t see myself joining. I’m not jealous, exactly. I’m just aware we’re entering a period of friendship adjustment, and I’m determined to adjust.

I’ve done it before, following Liz to Grey Tusk after a couple of years of long distance, when I was training in Vancouver and she was here. She’s worth the effort. Shegetsme. I may have a hot temper and keep slightly obsessive track of who owes what to whom, but she loves me anyway because I’m her best, most loyal advocate, and she’s mine. I’ve always treasured her the way she is; she doesn’t push me to change.

Except she did, that day with the crib.You need something.

My brain turns her words over as I shuffle in place, light brown silt collecting on my damp calves.

5:46

Okay, better get going. The artisanal knots for the hand-lettered trail markers aren’t going to tie themselves, lol. Ttyl

I know Liz would text me back if she could. I’ve worked in labor and delivery; I’ve seen how destroyed first-time parents are in the first few days.

I’d feel better if I heard from her, though. If, after my threetexts, there were three replies. I get nervous without hard evidence that people care as much as I do. That’s not just a me thing, either; the internet is rife with memes of cats spooking themselves over nothing and destroying entire rooms, captioned “when my friend leaves me on read.”

But last year I left town for barely twelve weeks, and when I came back Liz had made all new friends. When I move back to Pendleton three months from now, will she be going for chai lattes with all the yoga moms? Will there be room for me at that table?

I don’t know. All I can do is run to the tree every day and hope she texts me back sometime. Until then, I have work to do.

Technically, I’m not avoiding McHuge by doing my postrun stretch in the parking lot. I can hear him chopping the wood our chef, Jasvinder, requested for his pizza oven.When the axe is swinging, it’s safer to stay clear, I tell myself.

I’m working on my hamstrings when a black Escalade rolls up behind the Mystery Machine. A fiftysomething woman with silver-blond hair slides out of the driver’s seat and hooks her oversize sunglasses on the neckline of her athleisure top.

Sharon Keller-Yakub is the CEO-in-waiting of Keller Outdoor Epiphanies, an adventure tourism conglomerate in Grey Tusk. She’s also my ex’s aunt. It figures I’d run into her when my hair is sweaty and my face matches the bright raspberry shade of her yoga pants. McHuge told me Sharon was bankrolling the Love Boat, but I thought she was a silent partner, as opposed to one who turned up unexpectedly at 6:23A.M.

“Hi, Sharon. You’re up with the sun.”

“I keep telling you, Stellar, it’sAuntSharon. Is McHuge around?” She offers me a drink tray with three tall go-cups. “Coffee?”

Sharon’s a generally awesome person, but something in the set of her shoulders is making me nervous. And she’s here so damnearly. There are a million half-done projects around camp she can’t help but see.

“No, thanks. Love it, but haven’t been able to drink it since I burned a hole in my stomach lining in residency. That’s nice of you, though.”

“Well, shit,” she says, frowning. “Tea, then? I got English breakfast for McHuge. I’m sure he’d share.”

“Don’t tell him,” I say quickly, envisioning McHuge trying to give me the whole thing, me politely refusing, and the tea going cold in the Canadian standoff. “I don’t want to steal his drink. And should we still do the aunt thing, considering?” I say to distract her.

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