Page 11

“Music therapy, mostly,” she said. “I don’t get to practice as much as I want to.”

“Nobody ever can,” Jeff said. “When I think about the hours I put into classical guitar, my head explodes. Eight, sometimes twelve hours a day? Think of what else I could have been doing with that time.”

“But you’re really, really good,” Willow said. “Wasn’t it worth it?”

“No way,” Jeff said, although his eyes were shadowed, as though he regretted giving up on music, if only slightly. “I’m happier now. I’m glad I could pivot. I guess you know what happened to some of the others? Kelly’s working at a bar, and Evie’s got a substitute teaching job. It’s dire out there for musicians. Maybe it always was? Maybe we were naive to think we could make it work?”

“Maybe,” Willow said, not to feel angry with him. She hadn’t wanted to meet to discuss Jeff’s failed music career.

Jeff sipped his beer and offered her a light smile. “I’ve missed you over the years. I always thought we’d run into each other, but…”

Willow shrugged. The truth was, she hadn’t been anywhere she might have run into someone like Jeff. Mostly, she’d been at home, tending to her mother. Her adopted mother.

“Were you just at the speech?” she asked.

“Hawkins’s? Yeah. The guy’s on fire. He has it, you know? He’s really captivated Bostonians, young and old.”

“He seems great,” Willow said. “I was trying to read more about him, but it feels like his marketing people have scrubbed the internet of his past.”

Jeff’s eyes lit up. “That’s true, actually.”

“Is it bad? Like is he a bad guy?” Willow’s stomach tied into knots.

“Not exactly. It just isn’t the most palatable.”

Willow half expected Jeff to say something like, “He had a baby and gave her up for adoption.”

But instead, Jeff said, “Yeah, he comes from insane amounts of wealth. More wealth than you and I could ever fathom, probably. When he was eighteen, his father put him in charge of some of the biggest companies in the United States, and when he was twenty-two, he took on even more international companies. He had more power before he was our age than most on the planet. He gave it all up a few years ago. He scrubbed his name from the companies. The rumor is that he dug deeper into the factories he ran and realized they were instrumental in hurting the environment. I mean, it sounds obvious, but he apparently hadn’t thought of it before. He decided to throw himself into politics as a way to make up for all the wrong he’d done.”

“It isn’t the worst origin story, I guess,” Willow offered softly. She’d expected much worse.

“I’m sure he has a few more skeletons in his closet. These kinds of guys always do. I just hope the right reporter doesn’t get his hands on it,” Jeff said.

“Or her hands,” Willow said. “The reporter could be a woman.”

“Sure. Yeah.” Jeff gave her a weird look.

“I guess he has a family?” Willow said, though of course she’d been able to google that part.

“He has four kids,” Jeff said. “They’re all in their twenties.”

Willow knew that. Two were older than she was, and two were younger. Their mother was listed as Cynthia Hawkins, Nathaniel’s longtime wife, a woman just as beautiful as she seemed terrifying. Willow ached to know whether Cynthia had known about Willow’s birth. Had Cynthia been instrumental in making sure that Willow was given away for adoption?

“I think he’s going to make a run for president,” Jeff continued. “I guess everyone’s saying that, but I’m actually qualified to say it. I’m hoping I can move to Washington next year and watch it all unfold.”

Willow sipped her wine. “I hope you can, too.”

Jeff leaned back in his stool, making it wobble beneath him. He gave her a look that reminded her of where they started. Although it had been brief, they’d had a fling back in music school. They’d often performed music together, or practiced together, or duetted alone in one of their apartments. They’d cooked dinners for one another, and once, he’d asked her to braid his long, beautiful hair. Those had been happy days.

“I heard that your mother isn’t doing well,” Jeff said.

Willow was surprised. She let her gaze drop, cursing him for changing the mood. Who had told him, anyway? She had so little contact with other people, especially people they knew in common.

“I always liked Donna,” Jeff said.

“She liked you, too.” Willow supposed she didn’t have to say aloud that Donna probably wouldn’t have liked this new version of Jeff, the Jeff with the slicked-back hair and the political journalism ambitions.

Jeff looked momentarily pained. He slowly extended his hand over Willow’s, where it rested on the counter. Willow’s fingers burned, and she wanted to pull her hand away.