Maybe she’s focused on Birdie keeping independent because she herself didn’t. It was different, of course, but ever since Birdie first mentioned Tucker, she keeps thinking of Reese, the one and only boyfriend she had before Jason, and the person who haunts nearly all of her memories of her pre-DC life. She and Reese met in preschool, dated all through high school and college and most of graduate school, the two of them choosing to stay at Emory, where they’d both gone to undergrad, so that they could be together. He proposed just weeks before she defended her dissertation, on the dock behind her childhood home. Even though it feels like an entire lifetime since their relationship ended, like she’s an entirely different person than the one she would have been had she stayed in Georgia, she still feels a little burn deep down in her chest when she thinks of Reese, remembering how he’d ruined everything they’d planned, how they’d been engaged barely a month when she found out he’d been cheating. And not just cheating but brazenly dating another woman for almost a year before he proposed, living an entirely different existence apart from hers, with dinner dates when she thought he was studying for the boards and romantic weekends away when he said he was roadtripping with buddies to football games. She had just come home from a run when the woman—a fellow medical student studying pediatrics named Tricia—knocked on the door of her apartment and tearfully confessed their relationship, the morose disappointment all over her face as she took in the ring on Charlotte’s finger. She told Charlotte that they’d had a fight, and Reese had finally come clean about everything, confessing that Charlotte wasn’t, in fact, an old flame who couldn’t get over him and still called him sometimes. She also told Charlotte that Reese would never think she’d have it in her to come tell Charlotte about the two of them, and sure enough, that evening, when Reese came over expecting takeout and a movie, he actually tried to deny it at first.
For the longest time after she left him, the thing that bothered Charlotte the most was not that she’d been duped but that the person who’d done it had been someone she thought she knew so completely. She realized that it didn’t actually matter how long you knew someone. People change. Sometimes not for the better.
“Where does Birdie’s name come from anyway?” Dayna says as they return to the kitchen and she pulls another bottle from the wine fridge under the counter.
“It’s a nickname. Her full name is Beatrice, after my grandmother.”
“Oh.” Dayna nods, a vacant expression on her face like she hasn’t heard the answer or doesn’t really care. “Cute. Well, let’s go outside,” she says. “See what kind of trouble the boys have gotten themselves into.”
Dinner is served at a round wooden table under a trellis on the Cunninghams’ patio. Birdie sits across from Charlotte between her father and Tucker, and Charlotte takes the lucky middle seat between Dayna and Finch, who wipes his glistening forehead with the inside of his wrist just after he rests a massive porcelain tray heaped with burgers, grilled chicken, and hot dogs in the middle of the table.
“So!” Dayna says, placing a napkin on her lap. “I’ve bought your book, Charlotte, but I confess, I haven’t gotten to it yet. I love to read but there’s just never any time!” She looks around the table, her eyes wide like she’s searching for confirmation. Birdie nods politely at her. “Anyway, it’s on my nightstand! I can’t wait to dive in.”
“So are you just happy all the time?” Finch says, clamping a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, do people constantly ask you that?” he says, leaning in so close that Charlotte can see a speck of pepper between his teeth.
“They do,” Birdie says, taking a bite of her burger.
Charlotte winks at her, happy that her daughter finally seems relaxed. “It’s true,” she says, gearing up to give her usual explanation.
“So you just, what, never have a bad day?” Dayna says, her palms to the sky. “I mean, it seems that way!”
“Seriously!” Finch says, gesturing toward Charlotte. “You just look like a happy person!”
“So cute!” Dayna says. “Like a sweet little doll!”
Jason laughs. “Looks can be deceiving!” he jokes, the tone in his voice so lighthearted that the bite behind it doesn’t register to anyone but his wife, who narrows her eyes at him ever so slightly to communicate her displeasure. “Trust me, she’s not happy all the time!”
“Oh, well, that’s a relief!” Finch laughs, clapping his hands together. “So you are normal!”
Charlotte clears her throat, giving Jason a pointed look, and delivers the answer she must give at least twice a week. “Of course I’m not happy all the time. Nobody is. But what we know from the research is that while everyone has a very clear . . . the psychology community calls it a ‘happiness set point’ . . . there are a lot of simple things we can do in our daily lives to bump up our overall satisfaction. That’s what I’m focused on—the concrete, easy, achievable strategies that fit into our lives.”
“Does drinking wine count for one of those strategies?” Dayna laughs, raising her glass.
“Absolutely!” Charlotte says, raising her own.
“But you must have a high set point!” Finch says, pinching her arm.
Charlotte shifts in her seat. She wonders if Finch is a little drunk or if he’s just like this all the time.
“Wait! I want the husband’s perspective,” Finch says, pointing his fork at Jason. “What’s she really like at home? Does the mask come off?”
“Happy wife, happy life!” Dayna says, to everyone and no one.
Charlotte’s chest tightens, but she pushes past it, hoping that the actual tension between her and Jason isn’t obvious to the others—most of all, to Birdie. “Nobody should be happy all the time,” she says. “That’s not the goal. The goal is feeling like you’re ultimately headed in the right direction.” She looks at Jason, realizing, as the words are coming out of her mouth, that that’s exactly the problem. She’s not sure she feels like they’re headed in the same direction anymore . . . Their eyes linger on each other, and she knows he’s heard her the same way, as clearly as if she’d just come out and said it.
He sits up in his seat, breaking the spell. “Charlotte’s actually spent her entire career studying this stuff,” Jason says, giving her a weak smile. She can’t remember the last time he said something nice about her job, and she feels a warmth flood over her.
“I thought it would be more fun to study happiness than the alternative,” Charlotte says, using another one of her frequent lines.
“Well, from what I’ve seen, it certainly seems to have paid off!” Finch says. “I see your book everywhere.”
“Oh my God!” Dayna suddenly exclaims, clapping excitedly, like the cheerleader she must have been. “I just remembered something! I saw you on the Today show once! Last year, I think? I remember talking about it with some moms later. You’re, like, famous!”
“No, I’m—” Charlotte starts.
“She was on the Today show again last week,” Birdie interrupts, and looks at Charlotte and smiles.