Page 6 of The Rom-Commers

It wasn’t just the first dinner we’d had together in the months since she’d gone back to college last January—it was her graduation party. A graduation that, of course, my dad and I had missed, since he couldn’t travel—and if he couldn’t travel, neither could I.

This wasn’t just dinner. This was a celebration. My glorious, brilliant baby sister had graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the highly picturesque Carleton College—which, if you didn’t know, is the Harvard of the Midwest—and she was now, among many other things, living proof that our family had overcome all of its tragedies and was thriving, at last. Officially.

We were celebrating, dammit.

I’d made a cake in the shape of a graduation cap and stuck sparkler candles in it. I’d festooned our kitchenette with gold streamers and sprinkled confetti on the table. I’d typed out little menus and rolled them up like diplomas.

I wasn’t ruining all that bymoving to LA.

You had to maximize joy when it fluttered into your life. You had tohonor it. And savor it. And not stomp it to death by reminding everyone of everything you’d lost.

Sylvie showed up in a cropped tee with her fairy-tale straight blond hair billowing, looking like the personification of youth and beauty and hope—and lugging five hundred duffel bags of dirty laundry. And I hugged her around the neck with genuine joy and jumped and squealed and kissed her cheeks. And my dad met us at the door with his walker and we sang “Happy Graduation to You” to the birthday song tune, my dad adding some one-handed percussion with a maraca. And then we ate stacks of pancakes and sausages and squirted canned whipped cream all over everything.

We sat at our little dinette and chattered away and teased each other and enjoyed every second of being back together so much that I almost felt resentful in some tiny compartment in my brain that Logan Scott had called out of nowhere with that crazy Charlie Yates news and complicated things.

Today of all days.

The longer the evening went on, and the more we sat around chatting afterward, catching up and drinking root beer floats for dessert, the more the memory of that phone call faded for me. I felt a growing and peaceful sensation that the crisis had passed—that I no longer had to make any hard decisions, and life would continue on as predictable and normal and vaguely unsatisfying as ever.

I just wanted to be happy—simply, uncomplicatedly happy—for likeone evening. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently so.

Timing really was everything, I guess.

YOU MIGHT BEwondering why my fifty-five-year-old dad had to use a walker to come greet my sister at the door. Or why we couldn’t go to her graduation. Or why his percussion instrument of choice wasonemaraca.

I will give you the same vaguely cheery, deeply oversimplified answerthat we always gave everyone: Just under ten years ago, my father had “a camping accident.”

Pressed for details, I’ll add this: He was hit in the head during a sudden rockfall while climbing in Yosemite and got a traumatic brain injury—which left him partially paralyzed on one side, a condition called hemiplegia, and also suffering from an inner-ear issue that profoundly messed up his balance called Ménière’s disease.

That’s the long story short.

I’m leaving out a lot here. I’m leaving out the worst part, in fact.

But that’s enough for now.

That’s why my dad couldn’t be left alone. That’s why he moved through the world like he was ninety. That’s why I worried about him 24–7. And that’s why writing a screenplay with Charlie Yates in Los Angeles was totally, utterly, entirely out of the question.

I wouldn’t shirk my responsibilities.

I wouldn’t abandon my dad.

And I would not, not,noteclipse my baby sister’s potential by sticking her on medical duty in this six-hundred-square-foot apartment.

I wouldn’t. And I couldn’t…

Until I read the screenplay.

THE EMAIL FROMLogan with the subject “Apologies in Advance” hit my inbox just as Sylvie was settling in on the top bunk with Netflix and her headphones. Our PJs were on, the lights were off, and I stared at that attachment for a good long minute before finally giving in and clicking it open.

An hour later, I made it official:

Terrible.

We really would need a more terrible word for terrible.

First of all, it was—at least in theory—an updated retelling of the beloved rom-com classicIt Happened One Night. Written by a person who had clearly never seen the movie.

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