caroline
After my dad died, Sloane and I used to talk, in hushed tones, between ourselves, about how the day he was killed had felt strange, like nothing was off and yet everything was. I always wondered if it was retrospect that gave us that insight, if it was only in hindsight that we realized that something about the day felt a little bit eerie from the beginning.
Ever since then, I’ve been leery of perfect days. And this morning in Peachtree was perfect. On the walk from the guesthouse to the main house, I smelled that smell, the one that always reminded me of summer, one of the many things I really couldn’t duplicate in New York. The fresh scent of gardenias. I stopped to smell one, Preston strapped to my chest. I pulled a few off the bush and put them to Preston’s nose.
“Smell that?” I said. “That’s gardenia.” I kissed the top of his head, which smelled even sweeter. “If you’re like your mommy, you will always remember the smell of gardenia, no matter where you go. Although there’s no telling. I guess it’s possible that you could end up living in the South one day.”
I laughed at the thought.
As I made my way to the back door, I spotted the tanned legs and dark hair that could only belong to one man in town: Kyle. He was laden with this really cool coffee carrier he had made out of an old Coke crate.
“Hi, Kyle!” I said.
“Caroline,” he said. “Coffee for all!”
I motioned for him to follow me into the house. He did and started unloading.
“The usual for your mom, the rooibos decaf latte for you, caramel macchiato for Sloane—”
I stopped him there, putting my hand on his. “No more,” I whispered. “She needs something low-sugar and low-calorie. Work your magic.”
He smiled and saluted. “Will do. And a half-caf coffee with skim milk and two sugars for Grammy.”
I silently counted the coffees. “Where’s Emerson’s?”
“I passed her on the sidewalk and gave her hers.”
I cocked my head to the side, studying his face. Something in it changed when he talked about Emerson. Interesting. I could feel my mouth and eyes getting wide. “Oh, Kyle. Do you like her?”
He put his arm around me. “Well, sure, I like her. But not like that.”
“Mm-hm,” I hummed skeptically. I’d seen that look before. “Well, she’s all about that career right now, but hey, looks like I’ll be single soon. I mean, I’m ten years too old for you, but if you need a Murphy fix, I’ll be available.” I decided to see how it sounded, try it on for size. Not terrible. But certainly not great.
He squeezed me to him. “Thanks, Caroline. I really appreciate that.”
We both laughed, and I patted him on the back.
He said, “All right, Car. I’ll see you tomorrow. Let me know when you’re single.” He winked, and we both laughed again, much harder this time.
It wasn’t funny, but somehow it kind of was.
Preston still strapped to my chest, I got out a pan and started making eggs. Vivi walked in behind me, saying nothing. She sat down at the island and opened a textbook.
Grammy was laid up on the couch, waiting semipatiently for her orange juice. Adam was in the den with Grammy watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse—Mom had finally broken down and bought a TV—and Taylor was upstairs with Sloane folding towels. I could hear his sweet giggles drifting down the stairs, a sound much like music, a sound that I knew I would remember well after I was Grammy’s age.
Emerson, the overachiever in the family, was out for a jog, and we had all made a pact that after she returned, we would let the kids run around in the front yard while we attempted to do our Pilates. It would be touch and go, but it would be better than nothing.
We were perhaps more exhausted than even on our hangover morning, because the night before, I had done the unthinkable. With my sisters, I had watched every one of Edie and James’s episodes of Ladies Who Lunch. I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to. I had to have all of the information before I made my decision. I had to know what I was up against. Seeing them together on TV destroyed me. The way they looked at each other, the way they laughed. It was so much worse than I had imagined, and the fact that he had declared his love for me at the end didn’t make up for it.
Vivi disappeared out the back door, and I watched her go into the guesthouse.
I hadn’t seen James yet, and when Sloane walked into the kitchen, she said, “What have you decided about those papers?”
I shrugged. “Is it even a decision? Is there any way we can possibly come back from that? The image of the two of them together will be forever burned in my brain.” I turned to the side and scraped the eggs off the pan with a spatula, keeping the heat as far away as possible from Preston. “I can’t stand the idea of going back to New York, of my friends asking me about it and my fake friends having fake sympathy, people whispering when I walk past about how my husband had the affair with Edie Fitzgerald and I was the idiot who took him back . . .” I trailed off and looked out the window. “I’m hurt, and I’m humiliated. I’m not sure if that will ever heal.”
Vivi walked in through the back door as Emerson jogged in through the front, sweat around her ponytail, the back of her shirt wet.
“Are we ready?” she asked.
I pointed to the stove. “Eggs first.”
Emerson sat down at the island, and I pulled out a big stack of paper plates and started doling out eggs and strawberries.
“Viv,” I said, “could you please take this to Grammy?”
She jumped off the stool.
“What about the papers?” Emerson asked.
“We were just talking about that,” I said. “I don’t think there’s any way I can move on. I think we should make a clean break. It will be easier on everyone that way.”
“You should go to therapy,” Emerson said. “Oh! Oh! You can consciously uncouple like Gwyneth.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sure I’m the conscious-uncoupling type. I’m more the give-me-half-your-money-you-loser type.”
Vivi came back in, and we buttoned it back up.
“How come Gwammy gets to eat in the wiving woom?” Adam asked.
“Because she has a broken ankle, my love,” Sloane said. “It’s very, very hard for her to walk into the kitchen.”
“And she’s old,” Vivi whispered. We all smiled.
It was a perfect morning, by all accounts. Everything seemed right, despite my bad news. Any decision at all felt like a relief. But we would say later that something was in the air. We were all on edge, for no reason we could discern.
I chalked it up to Mr. Solomon’s death in the house right next door, to the idea and remembrance that our time here wasn’t guaranteed. But in hindsight, I know that it was something more.
I retrieved a Dollar Tree bag from the pantry and doled out the obscene amount of bubbles and sidewalk chalk I’d picked up the day before. It would buy us at least twenty minutes.
I laid out an extra mat for Preston, who cooed and kicked at the air. Mom would be home any minute. We thought about waiting for her, but we decided against it.
If we had waited, we would have had a few more seconds of normal, a few more seconds of that happy, easy morning, with no makeup and plenty of free time, when life felt like those summers when we were children. The worries were few, the cares far between.
My back was turned to the fence, and I was getting everyone stretched out before we started. Which was why I didn’t see what was behind me. But I saw Sloane’s face go white. And I saw Emerson grab her hand.
I turned, and my first instinct was to get Adam, which I did. I scooped him up and ran into the house, putting him on the couch with Grammy. She was snoozing, and his TV channel was still on.
When I saw those uniforms, I knew I didn’t want it to be his first memory. I didn’t want him to look back on his life and know that the very first thing he remembered was those two men telling him what I could only assume would be the worst news of his life, news that would steal his childhood and haunt him forever.
I knew what that was like. We all did.
And I knew this drill. I knew that one of those uniformed men was a soldier, and one was a chaplain. We had been told about this, debriefed. I knew what that meant. Or, at least, I thought I did.
I ran back outside, into that peaceful, sunny day, where Vivi was blowing bubbles and Taylor was giggling, where Preston was lying calmly on his back, discovering his hands. Where my sister was quiet but sitting on the ground, her head in her hands, my other sister wrapped around her.
“We have to pray for the best,” the chaplain said. “We have to know that, either way, this isn’t the end.”
It might not have been the end of the world, but it was the end of Sloane’s world. It was the end of our family’s world. Life was too short, I remembered yet again. Life was too short not to live by your own terms, not to make up your own rules. As the sob came up in my throat so violently it nearly choked me, as I wrapped up my sister on her other side, all at once I knew exactly what to do about those papers.