"Where are you?" Dad asked.

"Sorry, I'm running a little late. There was a car accident off Elm," I blatantly white-lied, fastening my seat belt and looking behind me as I backed out of the driveway. "I'll be there in less than ten."

"OK." The apprehension in his voice melted away. "Our table's in the back, past the hostess's desk. If you call when you get here, I'll come outside to meet you."

I told him I'd just meet them inside, and disconnected as I headed down our street. For a moment, I tried to place a scent that seemed to be permeating through my closed windows. It almost smelled like something sweet being burned, but I quickly forgot about it as the clock on my dashboard taunted me, as if it knew there'd be no way I'd make it to the restaurant in less than twenty minutes. I turned the dial up on the radio, cursing myself for forgetting my iPod, and tried to let the horrible Top Forty music drown out my unease. The sun was setting, leaving a soft pink glow over all the houses and the cars surrounding me, and soon enough it would be dark out.

As I took the left into Spaghetti Thyme, the clock smugly reminded me it'd been twenty-five minutes since I'd last spoke to my Dad. I tried to tidy up my hair which I let air-dry into a mass of messy curls, and smooth out the wrinkles the seat-belt had left behind on my dress. I gave myself a quick once-over in the passenger window of the car parked next to mine, and decided it was as good as it was going to get. The humidity surely wasn't doing me--and most of all my hair--any favors.

Crisp air-conditioned air and a dim candle-lit glow welcomed me as I stepped inside the restaurant, and I waved at my Dad to let him know that I saw our little group. Sitting to his left was Anna, who was laughing at something Joe was saying. There was an empty, silky seat across from my Dad saved for me.

"There's the lady of the hour," Joe's strident voice called out as I came into view. "I'm sorry, but we ate all of the bread in the basket,' he said, standing up and pulling me into one of his grizzly hugs, "But we saved you plenty of slabs of butter."

I laughed noncommittally, and gave Anna a polite embrace."You look beautiful," she said as she sat back down. Mentally, an image flashed to my unmanageable hair that I hadn't even attempted to discipline for weeks, and I wondered why people even tell white lies. They're so easily recognizable-the biggest thorn on the stem of a rose. But then again, I often translated entire soliloquies of my thoughts into little white lies, letting them slip out as smoothly as the slabs of butter they'd sarcastically saved for me.

"Traffic was bad?" Dad asked. There was a serpentine grin hiding in his smile letting me know I was off the hook for being late. He passed me a thick leather-bound menu. "I ordered you a Diet Coke."

"Thanks." I opened the menu in front of me, in need of a task before the Spanish Inquisition had a chance to begin. I hadn't connected with Joe since the holidays, so I braced myself for all of The Questions. What are your plans for the future? Have you considered a major yet? I hear Whittaker has excellent extracurricular activities. Was Whittaker your final decision? My stomach grumbled as a waft of something savory rose in towers of steam from a tray a waiter was carrying from the kitchen to a nearby table. "Do you know what you guys are getting?" I asked, steering the conversation to safe topics-like food.

"We came here a couple weeks ago," Anna said. "The mushroom risotto is spectacular."

I nodded, not wanting to tell her that I hated everything about mushrooms-from the texture to the taste--as I continued to scan the menu.

"So Sport," Joe shifted to face me. "Fill me in on your exotic and entertaining life as an eighteen-year old so I can live vicariously through you. How does having all of your own real teeth feel? Never grow up, it's not any good."

I was instantly filled with a warm sentiment. Joe, now in his sixties, has been telling me not to grow up since I was a little girl, back when we still lived in our apartment in Dorchester. Joe Clancy was the closest thing I had to an extended family; the "Uncle" who brought me to Red Sox games-who never missed a birthday party. Both of my parents were only children with no real, concrete familial ties to their own parents, so Joe stepped in as some kind of surrogate grandparent, and I'm glad he filled that role. Joe Clancy has always been one of my favorite humans.

"My teeth are alright, thanks to the two years of braces. How's work?"

"Busy as usual. Wouldn't be an architect if I could say our projects are ahead of schedule and the budget's going to plan." He took a sip of his wine and loosened the purple tie he was wearing. "But how about you? Any fun plans for the summer?

I opened my mouth to speak, but fortunately our waitress came back-a Diet Coke in one hand, and an order pad open ready to take our requests in the other. "Do we need another couple of minutes?" she queried--though the tapping of her foot  told us she hoped that wasn't the case.

"I'll have the chicken Parmesan." I handed her the menu and peeled the wrapper off of my straw.

"Angel hair pasta or ziti?"

"Angel hair, please."

I took a sip of my Diet Coke as she turned her attention to Joe as she scribbled down his order. The waitress looked vaguely familiar: Maybe she was a year behind me at THS, I couldn't say for sure. I guess after awhile, everyone around here starts looking similar: It's not the biggest town, and if I she didn't go to school with me, I could have easily seen her at the grocery store or the post-office.

That's one thing about college--maybe the only thing--that I am going to miss out on: New faces. Here in Townshill, you knew everyone: When I first got my driver's license, I spent unending hours driving through the borders of other towns with just my music blasting, and the feeling of seeing different places and people--even just in passing--almost felt like a small act of rebellion. Sometimes I forget that my Plan B comes with the same old faces and places, which isn't something I'd exactly planned out. The truth is, if there was anywhere I could go to get away from Townshill--besides college--I'd be there in a heartbeat. There just wasn't anywhere to go.

After she shuffled off with our orders, Anna cleared her throat and raised her wineglass for a toast. "To Thea: For all of her hard work in high school, and to all of her future success". Four glasses met in the middle of the table, clinking together above the playing light of the candle.

"So what's this I hear about you taking a gap year before going to college?" Joe's thick eyebrows were drawn together and his expression stern. I stifled a sigh, bracing myself for a lecture as any hope of avoiding this conversation floated to the bottom of my stomach along with my Diet Coke.

I was just so sick of talking about, well, everything. It almost felt like those initial hours with my Mom and Dad--along with the verbal threat of a lawyer--back when they argued over custody and living arrangements once she returned from her disappearance. Except this time, I was the one presenting a case to the jury, waiting for everyone else to accept my laundry list of reasons why taking a year off was in my best interest. To my surprise, it was my Dad who came swiftly to my defense.

"Prior to popular belief, there's some real advantages to taking a year off. Thea will have time to form a better idea of what she wants to study and where her interests lay before committing to a major or concentration. Hell," he said, taking a sip of his bottled beer, "It took me seven years to get my degree, partly because I had no idea what I wanted to do or where to start. "

"To be fair," Joe contended, "You had a baby at the time."

"Yes, but Thea came out walking, talking, and completely literate, so she was a hardly a challenge. I don't think we heard her cry, even once."

Winking subtly as his eyes met mine across the table, a fondness for my Dad unexpectedly washed over me like a flash flood, drowning out all of the dry areas of doubt I may have had over the past couple of years. Ever since Anna came along, I couldn't help but think that we've been silently drifting apart, letting the slow pull of the tide carry us out to different shorelines. There was a point when all we had was each other. But in moments like these--and not just because of his sarcastic attempt at changing the subject--I knew we'd always be on each other's teams.

Joe laughed and recognized the imminent change of subject, and Anna took reign of the conversation. I laughed along as she told us a story about one of her kindergartners who compulsively rearranges the cubbies in her classroom, taking lunch boxes out and redistributing them at random. It seemed like forever, but I finally saw the bobbing ponytail of our waitress heading back to us, her hands occupied with a large tray holding our dinner plates.

Hot cheese and sweet marinara sauce melted in my mouth as I took my first bite of chicken and hunger awoke ravenously inside my stomach. During my morning jog, I had logged in some extra miles, so the carbs from the pasta were being consumed with a loud approval from my empty stomach.

"I think there's a shovel in the parking lot," Joe said, chuckling as he watched me scarf down my pasta in an anything but ladylike manner. I briefly entertained the idea of sticking my pinky finger out while taking my next sip of Coke to constitute for my lack of table-side etiquette.

"I skipped lunch today," I offered as an explanation in between bites. "I'm famished."

"A pretty girl with an appetite? A girl after my own heart." Joe took his fork and dug into his eggplant, chewing it before letting out a grunt of approval.

"Another Diet Coke?" The waitress asked, tapping her foot again, impatient as ever. I nodded in response as she took my empty glass and put it on her vacant tray, surveying the table for more. "Would you like some more Perrier?"

"Yes, please." Anna answered, lifting her wine glass and draining the rest of her water--apparently--in one sip. "With a lemon, please."

"Does drinking water out of a wine glass trick you into thinking you're drinking the real thing?" Joe asked Anna, who laughed out loud.

"Not quite. No matter how many lemons I add, it just never seems to taste much like Pinot Gritio."

"Well, then I'm afraid you are going to have a long and winding six months ahead of you."

Immediately, I could tell something was wrong. Looking up from my already half empty plate, everyone was engaged in a staring contest with one another: Anna's eyes were nearly touching her eyebrows, gawking at my Dad, who was gaping at Joe with an expression that at first, I couldn't place. Joe returned my Dad's gaze with trifling curiosity before his eyes widened with some kind of immediate awareness, and he abruptly put down the glass of wine he'd been holding onto the table. A drop spilled over, staining the ivory tablecloth like a blush red bullet wound.

"Thea," my Dad said very carefully, as if sliding his words over frozen water on a warm winter day, worried that any second, the pressure would break the fragile surface. I just sat there staring at them all, utterly confused.

"We were going to tell you at home tonight," Anna added. "Together."

I continued to just look back at them, stupidly--my fork speared with a piece of chicken suspended in midair--when comprehension hit me like punch to the stomach. Everything in my line of vision confirmed it: The empty wine glass that had been filled with water. My Dad's expression, angry and regretful and concerned, all at once. The ghost of Joe's dead words, six months, floating in the air, and the blemish on the tablecloth left behind from his wine when he realized the foot he'd put in his mouth.

My fork dropped to my plate, and it took everything in me to meet my Dad's eyes, to validate what everything and everyone around me was telling me. Our eyes locked, and it took just that second, that tiny fraction of time, and I knew it was true: Anna was pregnant.

My Dad opened his mouth to say something. What he said though, I didn't hear. As a matter of fact, everyone at the table was talking to me: I could tell by the way their mouths were opening and closing, their hands moving as fluidly as the words that were coming out in an endless, soundless stream. But it didn't make a difference. None of it was making it out of the muddle and into my ears alive.

I pushed my chair back, threw the napkin on my lap onto the table, and stood up. "I have to go the bathroom," I heard myself say through a thick fog. Change always made me anxious, rationally or irrationally so. Small changes, colossal ones, it didn't matter: Any kind of change had the same effect on me. And right now, I didn't have the time to analyze this new and arguably very life-changing piece of information, and just needed a second of privacy in case the panic decided to show up uninvited.

"Thea," I heard my Dad say, pushing back his own chair, about to get to his feet. "Just hold--"

That's when several different things happened at once.

I heard the crash first: It rang through the fuzziness of the thoughts I was trapped in unexpectedly. Abrasively as a gunshot. It was followed by a piercing scream.

Everything else happened in fragments of puzzle pieces that slowly put together a whole image: The crowd of people standing from their seats, curious heads poking around for the source of commotion. Dishes and glasses splayed out in broken slivers on the floor, spilled wine forming rivers around the shattered remains. Our impatient waitress was on the floor, peeling a piece of spaghetti from her ponytail as she scowled at the bus boy next to her, already cleaning up the mess he'd made when the two had collided and crashed.

It took my Dad's gentle touch on my shoulder for me to snap out of my stupor. As fast as the tumult had begun, it ended just as quickly. All that remained of the chaos was a hushed murmur of voices in harmony with broken plates scraping into a bin. With a pulsing moment of humility, I realized everyone was looking at me.

And that's when it shot me: It was me who had screamed.

With my Dad's steady arm as a guidance, I stalked through the restaurant with my eyes diverted to the ground, past the hostess's desk and outside into the parking lot. The taming heat of the summer night warmed away the goosebumps on my arms the AC left behind, and Dad put two heavy arms on my shoulders.

"Thea, are you sure you're OK?" Dog, I hated that question. His blue eyes were congested with so many of his own emotions, I didn't know if he was talking about what had just happened in Spaghetti Thyme. Or if he meant it in a deeper, all-consuming way. If I was OK after everything that's happened since October 9th.

Instead of answering , I looked up over his shoulder and out of the parking lot's vantage point a little ways down the road. There, lit up by a streetlight , was a sign declaring what I already knew by heart: "Entering the town of Townshill."

A set of traffic lights struck green, and the cars that had been stopped formerly at the red light lurched into motion, crossing over the borderline where one town ended and the other began. I watched as one car halted to a complete stop in the middle of the road to allow an oncoming vehicle to make a left turn, and for that tiny, insignificant span of time, half of the car was in Townshill, and the other half was in the next town over. There they were, in two places at once, but at the same time, stuck in between the cars that were coming and going; leaving and entering. Sitting still, still, still, wedged in between the people moving around them, who were already leaving something behind or moving on with somewhere else to go.

"You've reached Evelyn Roth. Sorry I'm not here to take your call, but if you leave your name and a message, I'll get back to you in due time."

There was a beep on my Mom's voicemail, and I knew I only had a couple of seconds before I'd run out of time to leave a message. To tell her I was, in fact, taking her up on her offer to spend the summer at her family's vacation home in Cape Cod. Something about her recorded voice, raspy and untouchable even after all these years, managed to throw me off guard. The line disconnected as I put my phone down, pacing away from it like my iPhone was the problem and not the decision I'd just reached.

After the incident at Spaghetti Thyme, I drove around for a couple hours, trying to use music and an aimless change of scenery to clear my head. Mostly, I was still embarrassed from the episode at the restaurant, but also, I was trying to avoid the inevitable conversation with my Dad about the fact that no matter how still I stood, everything in my life was changing so rapidly around me. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Maybe it was because I was banking on at least some things to stay the same that the universe kept juxtaposing so much unexpected change into my life.

All of the lights were off when I finally parked in the driveway. I tiptoed through the kitchen and up the stairs, shutting my door as quietly as I could. Slipping my headphones into my ears, I laid on top of my covers and just stared at my ceiling, coaxing it to come up with a solution.

I couldn't stay in Townshill anymore: It was a fact. I just couldn't. As long as Alex Lopes lived down the street, and as long as I could see the For Sale sign outside the Stanley's vacant house, I'd be reminded of every single mistake I've made that's brought me to this place initially. Then, I also had to take into consideration that life in this house was about to shift all around me with the impending arrival of my sibling. So if staying in Townshill was impossible, than leaving Townshill was the only way out of this mess. Except leaving was also impossible, because I had virtually nowhere to go.

At some point, I drifted off to sleep, and when I blinked open my eyes, my ceiling answered me: I did have one option--but not without consequences. And it was only a temporary solution to a bigger problem. Either way, gravely, I knew what I had to do: I was going to have to stay with my Mom. The problem was, every time I got her voicemail, I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud. I dialed her number for the third time, but was interrupted the moment I heard the first ring.

"Thea?"

I watched my door wedge open as my Dad inched his way in, as if the slow materialization of his body into the privacy of my bedroom would somehow make him feel more welcomed. He was holding two cups of coffee, and gave me a mug like a white flag.

I took the proffered peace offering and sat up, stripping the elastic off my wrist and throwing my hair into a messy bun. "Dad," I said, looking at my phone, knowing what to do. "I'm going to Samoset."

For a moment, he just looked at me almost confused and satisfied simultaneously. Then, the guilt flooded into his eyes. Before he could start talking, I cut him off.

"It has nothing to do with you or Anna. I'm really happy for you guys, truly." I tried to emphasize the sincerity behind my words, hoping that somewhere deep inside, they were true. I was happy for them. At least, I thought I was. Actually, I'm positive I was underneath all of the messy shock.

"Then what is it?"

"Honestly, I just need to get away. Not from you," I stressed quickly, "but from everything else."

He looked at me for a long time before taking a sip of his own coffee. Too long of a time, and TBH? That's coffee neglect, but that wasn't the situation at hand here."You know, I do think it's a great idea. It will be really good for you and your mom to spend some time together." He reached into his pocket, pulling out a piece of paper that he handed to me. "I meant to show you this last night."

Unfolding it, I realized I was holding the ultrasound. The picture was fuzzy, and black and white, and I could barely make out a head-never mind a little person growing in there. But it was everything I needed to seal my decision.

"Congratulations, Dad. I can confirm from experience that you make a tolerable father."

A sheepish grin dissolved some of the concern in his eyes, and he leaned forward to peck me on the top of my head."I'll settle for tolerable, but I'll be lucky if I get another kid half as good as you."

That wouldn't be much of a challenge, I kept to myself.

He left my room, so I redialed my Mom. Bracing myself for the beep, I took a deep breath. Reaching the decision to leave Townshill was the difficult part. Now that I've made the decision to go, it seemed like the simplest thing in the world to do.

I put my duffel bag into the trunk and pulled my sunglasses over my eyes.

I kept replaying my decision as I hastily packed, as if fast-forwarding and rewinding it would somehow make me understand the replay. I just never thought that under any circumstance I'd be in the position of spending weeks on end with my mother--and willingly so.

"Call me when you get there" Dad requested with just enough amount of sternness to ensure that I would. As always, he searched my eyes, looking for clues before pulling me into a hug. I wondered when exactly I stopped wearing my real emotions on my face for him to read like a map.

"I will." I responded, getting behind the wheel. After strapping my seat-belt across my waist, I rolled down my window, where Dad was lurking outside the driver's side door.

"Thea," he said, crouching next to my open window. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it reflexively. Finally, he simply said: "I'm going to miss you."

"I'm not going to the end of the world, you know. The Cape is just a car ride away."

"Home's just a car ride away, too." His gaze held a promise, an open invitation to come back at any time. For a meaningful several beats, he maintained eye contact before knocking his fist twice on the hood of my car. His tall silhouette was still visible in my rear-view as I took the left off of our street and onto the main road leading to the highway.

With the radio turned up loud and the AC cranked, I kept driving and driving along, until the rooftops of houses were just specks in the background, and a long expanse of highway stretched out ahead.

Finally.

I was finally leaving Townshill behind, fading to dust. But there was no sigh of relief, no pressure lifted from my shoulders, because quite honestly? I had absolutely no idea where I was going.