For the next few days after Charlie's departure, Kennedy threw herself into her schoolwork. She got caught up on all her classwork, her marking, even read ahead in her textbooks and did practice problems before they were assigned. She worked late into the night until she was so exhausted, she fell asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow.

She did not, however, touch her thesis. The problem of it was growing in her mind until it was so large, she had no idea what to do about it. The fact that it shouted 'Charlie' at her every time she approached it didn't help.

Studying in her room was nearly impossible. Not only was her thesis literally staring at her from the walls, her bed kept flinging memories of Charlie at her. Not only the memories of how much fun they'd had between the sheets, but also his tenderness, his openness. Had it all been an illusion, or was there some truth in her memories? She couldn't figure out why he would lie to her. What on earth was he getting out of manipulating her? Unless that was it: he got off on manipulating people, getting them to willingly do things that they wouldn't normally do in a million years. He'd convinced her to have sex outside in the middle of the city! And even worse, she'd enjoyed it. She felt dirty, used. Angry. Stupid.

Kennedy had spread all her books and her laptop across the kitchen table, which filled it entirely. Studying here wasn't a good long-term solution, since Chandra had a nasty tendency to want to use the table at mealtimes, but for now it would do. She focused all her attention on the task at hand, but when she paused to change from one assignment to the next, the thoughts she'd been trying to keep at bay snuck in.

What would she do now? Get over him, eventually. Sulk for a while, first. What would it be like dating someone else, someone more like herself? Someone predictable and timid and likely to keep his natural hair color until the end of his days? The prospect seemed nearly as dull as being forced to do simple first-year calculus for years on end.

She craved intellectual challenge. Thrived on it, really. She'd never thought that challenge in her personal life would ever be something she'd miss when it was gone. What she wanted was Charlie 2.0; someone with all his positive attributes, but solid morals. A degree wouldn't hurt, either.

An alarm chimed on Kennedy's phone. It was time to haul her books back to her room and get ready to make the three-hour drive to her parent's house. She'd called her mother and let her know that she didn't have plans for the weekend, after all, and was now available for her father's birthday dinner whenever they wanted it. Her mother, in her enthusiasm for all things celebratory, had decided the dinner would be the weekend coming; today.

She put away her study materials, brushed her hair, and packed. She was concerned about keeping her mind occupied on the long drive and packed an audiobook she'd borrowed on a rare trip to the public, rather than university, library. To make sure the story had as little chance as possible of having a romantic subplot, Kennedy had chosen a sci-fi thriller with words like 'fast-paced' and 'terrifying' on the back of the box.

An hour into the drive, she'd polished off the small bag of almonds she'd brought to much on, crunching on the nuts in her irritation at the audiobook.

"Oh, come on!" she said to the too-stupid-to-live hero. "Why are you wasting your ammo shooting at a shark that's falling from two thousand feet up? It's not like it's going to survive the landing!" She thumbed the power button of her stereo and the car filled with silence.

She made it seven minutes before turning it back on. Turns out breakups are even worse than implausible

stories. Kennedy endured the next two CDs of the book, preferring to be angry at a disembodied voice rather than the one in her head that constantly berated her lack of judgement.

She pulled into the driveway of her parent's house right on time. "Crud!" she cried, then reversed out of the driveway and found the nearest convenience store. She ran in and grabbed the least awful birthday card she could find, signed it in the car, then returned to her parent's house. She didn't have a gift, but at least she'd managed not to turn up completely empty-handed.

Kennedy hated forgetting things. Usually the reminders on her phone were her safety net, not her lifeline. She'd forgotten to set a reminder to buy a gift because she'd forgotten she needed to bring one. Not a good sign that she was starting to get back in control of her life again. She knew she had a low tolerance for frustration, but this felt less like frustration and more like a deep loss of control.

Well, if she was already feeling hopeless and helpless, that sounded like an ideal time for a visit with her family.

They were good people, and Kennedy had had a happy childhood. They'd just never let her leave that childhood behind. Despite being in her mid-twenties, she was still in 'school', so she was treated like she was still a kid, was the way she saw it.

Kennedy parked her car behind her mother's shiny gray sedan, steeled her nerves and walked up the brick path to the door. She knocked, to make it clear that she didn't live there any longer, but didn't wait for anyone to come to the door, because she'd lived there for the first eighteen years of her life and her mother had told her she didn't have to knock.

"Hello!" she called, kicking off her sneakers and nudging them to the side of the hall and into the collection of shoes already there. She'd just hung her coat in the closet when her mother trotted out of the kitchen, arms wide.

"Kennedy, honey, it's good to see you," she said, then enveloped Kennedy in a hug that smelled of onions and basil.

Kennedy was whisked off to the kitchen and put to work washing lettuce, as though she wasn't to be trusted with sharp knives, like her sister, Julia, who was dicing celery with indecent finesse. Their grandmother was in the kitchen, too, standing at the stove, stirring a pot of something steaming, the fragrance lost to the smell of the roast seasoned liberally with garlic that was cooking in the oven.

Kennedy shirked her duties long enough to give her grandmother a hug from behind. Though she still lived alone, her grandmother was starting to show signs of decline, and Kennedy always worried that each visit would be the last.

Sunday dinner at Mom's house was a family routine. Grandma, Julia, her husband and two kids all lived within a twenty-minute drive, and always came every Sunday at three, so turning today's gathering into a birthday dinner had taken almost no notice at all.

Kennedy had been more than happy to leave that domesticity behind when she'd gone to school too far away to make it back for the weekly dinner (though her parents had offered to pay for a round-trip bus ticket any time). Today, though, the familiar routine, being treated like the annoying baby sister, listening to voices she'd heard all her life, was oddly soothing, despite being corrected on her lettuce-washing technique once by her mother and again by her sister. The hotter the water, the cleaner things got, right?

In no time at all, Julia's husband, Mattieu, had gathered up the children he'd been keeping occupied while dinner was cooking, and they were all gathered around the table. Kennedy was contentedly quiet during dinner, listening to the kind of conversation about minutiae that can only be had by people who spend a lot of time together discussing their lives.

Her mother swiveled her head in Kennedy's direction, pinning her to her chair with a look that said 'inquisition' all over it.

"So, Kennedy, you never did tell me what precipitated this sudden change in plans."

Kennedy shrugged. "Plans change, that's all." She dropped her eyes to her plate and drew meticulous fork-tracks in her mashed potatoes.

"I thought you had plans with a young man?"

All heads lifted and turned in Kennedy's direction in such a synchronous movement that they couldn't have been more precise if they'd planned and practiced the feat. She shoved the urge to crawl under the table into her shoes. She was a grown woman. Making plans with a guy was hardly scandalous at her age.

"Like I said, I had plans, and now I don't. Plans change," she said, hoping her stiff tone would end this line of questioning.

"Oh, honey, what happened?" her mother asked in the same half-exhasperated voice she'd used when clumsy, little Kennedy had come to her with yet another bump or bruise.

Kennedy glanced over at her father, who had his head down and was focused on cutting his slice of roast into identical small pieces.

"Mom, I hardly think this is cheerful dinner conversation."

Her mother gave a small gasp, then said, "Gotcha." She gave Kennedy a small wink; a promise that though she'd give Kennedy a reprieve through dinner, the conversation was far from over.