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Olivia shifted gently in bed. Her soft sheets swept across her legs and curled over her stomach, and she dug her head deeper into her pillow and prayed that the alarm would go off to haunt some other creature. Beside her, Anthony slept on. He had his back turned to her, that broad, muscular back of his, and with every breath, he seemed to grow three times the size of his normal size before a slight snore sent him back again. She pressed a hand against his back tenderly as her heart stirred with love. Yet again, she found herself counting her blessings. She hadn’t done that enough when Tyler had been around. She hadn’t forced herself to appreciate every single, silly day, whether it was good or bad. She wouldn’t make that same mistake again.
She rose a few minutes before her alarm, shut it off, and padded into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. There was a chill to the September morning, and she reached for an old flannel in the front closet and wrapped herself up like a burrito. It was six-fifteen already, and she faced another frantic day which would result in an eight-hour workday at the high school, followed by six or seven hours working at The Hesson House.
She poured herself a cup of black coffee, considered milk and then thought better of it. She then grabbed her phone from the charger. What happened next was like a bomb going off.
Chelsea had texted her at around two in the morning, then two-thirty, then three, then three-thirty. Olivia felt as though there was a storm in the far distance, headed her way.
CHELSEA: I don’t know how to tell you this, but Dad appeared at my door tonight. Late. After my shift.
CHELSEA: He was so drunk. I thought he was just some crazy guy on the street, and then bam, it was Dad, and I brought him in and he passed out on the couch.
CHELSEA: Xavier came home right away, and we’re okay, but I have absolutely no idea what to do.
CHELSEA: I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably, it’s all fine. Maybe he just came to visit.
Olivia’s heart pattered dangerously. This sort of behavior was bizarre, even for Tyler. No, she didn’t know a great deal about Tyler’s life these days — just that his girlfriend, Casey, was about to give birth. And probably that had brought up a whole lot of chaos for him. Olivia had known Tyler since their high school days; it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on with him, even from the island.
Still, showing up drunk to his adult daughter’s apartment in Brooklyn was a low blow. Maybe the lowest of all the lows.
Immediately, Olivia called Chelsea on her cell. It rang twice before Chelsea answered groggily.
“Mom?”
“Hi, honey.” Olivia’s speech felt handicapped. “I just got your messages.”
Chelsea buzzed her lips. Olivia could practically see her, how she probably rubbed her eyes and then rolled them back in early morning annoyance. How often she had seen that grouchy version of Chelsea; now, she missed every version of her.
“Yeah. Sorry. I kind of went off the rails last night.”
“Understandable. Gosh, I didn’t expect this.”
“Neither did I.” Chelsea paused for a moment and then muttered something off to the side, probably to Tyler. Olivia felt a pang of sorrow and anxiety as though she had interrupted her daughter during a private moment. “Anyway, Xav says he’s still conked out on the couch.”
“Maybe you should wake him up? Demand answers?”
“I don’t know.” Chelsea was silent for a moment.
Olivia had to fight her every instinct to demand Chelsea to put her on the phone with Tyler. She remembered the volatile fights they’d had in the years before Tyler’s departure to Boston. She could rekindle that anger. She could find the words.
“I’m sure when he wakes up, he’ll explain everything,” Chelsea told her then.
Olivia’s heart dropped. This was typical Chelsea: always on her father’s side. The door creaked from the bedroom, and Anthony stepped out, rubbing the top of his head. He furrowed his brow when his eyes met Olivia’s. She probably looked pale as a ghost.
“What’s wrong?” he mouthed.
“I can call everything off today,” Olivia said suddenly. “I can be in Brooklyn in just a few hours.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mom.” Now, Chelsea pulled out her obstinate, teenage voice — the one that very pointedly put Olivia in her place.
Olivia knew better than to blow on the flames. “You’ll tell me when you know more, right?”
“Of course,” Chelsea returned. “I’m going to try to get more sleep. I have a long shift tonight and a lot to deal with. The city is a lot, Mom.”
“I know, honey.” Olivia’s heart shattered. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
At least she’d said it. At least she still felt that way. At least they still had their mother-daughter bond, even after Chelsea had run off the island to “find herself” in the city. Olivia placed her phone on the counter as her shoulders shook. Anthony stepped up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her.
Anthony entered the room. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Tyler is there, apparently.” Olivia placed her hands over her eyes and tried to dismiss all of this as just a nightmare. “He showed up drunk and then he just passed out on her couch.”
“My God.”
“I know. It’s bad, even for him. And his girlfriend is about to have their baby. I mean, is he going to go break up another family?”
Olivia had the sense that Anthony had a whole lot of things to say about this but instead decided to keep his lips sealed. It did nobody any good for the new boyfriend to be talking smack about her ex-husband. Olivia was grateful for this. Plus, Anthony knew the intricacies of exes. His wife had cheated on him with his best friend; he had left Providence, thinking that he would never see his daughter again. In the wake of that, he and his daughter had restored their relationship to what it had been previously, and she’d even come to the island frequently over the summer. Olivia had really taken to the girl. The word “stepmother” no longer freaked her out so much. Not that Anthony was on the verge of any kind of proposal.
“Poor Chelsea,” is what Anthony said instead.
“That’s what I keep coming back to, too,” Olivia admitted. “She didn’t ask for any of this. Tyler left her and now he’s come back to use her as some kind of crutch.”
“Why don’t you call in a sick day today? You have too much on your plate right now and it would do you some good to focus. We could hang out at the hotel. Wait for more info. And, you know, put out any more hotel fires while we’re at it.”
“I don’t know. I already feel like I’m not giving those kids my full attention,” Olivia said. “I should go. It’ll take my mind off of things to talk about books and writing all day.”
In the shower, Olivia found herself lost in thought as the razor-sharp jolts of hot water ran over her back. She scrubbed her scalp, washed her body, and then stepped into the steam of the bathroom. The mirror was nothing but fog. In a rush, she wrapped the towel around her body and headed for her closet, where she selected a pair of slacks and another blouse.
Anthony had turned on the television in the living room. It blared with news of a baseball game. The sound was like a drone, and it calmed Olivia’s thoughts. She’d always marveled that men took such solace in sports. “Don’t you know there are books in the world?” she’d always wanted to ask Tyler. But just then, the fact that some guys got paid to throw a tiny white ball around on a field gave her a soft, tender feeling. It was easy, but there were rules.
Olivia decided to stop by the Frosted Delights Bakery en route to school that morning. She waited behind two couples, both of whom seemed to be Martha’s Vineyard tourists. They took just about forever to decide what flavor of donut they wanted. Olivia shifted her weight and crossed and uncrossed her arms. Really? On today of all days?
Finally, she stepped up to find Jennifer, the red-headed beauty, beaming at her from the other side of the counter. Jennifer tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear and grinned broadly.
“And what can I do for you, stranger?”
Olivia couldn’t help it. Jennifer’s smile was infectious. She returned it, then immediately burst into tears. Why couldn’t she control her emotions? Jennifer rushed around the counter and flung her arms around her, then hurried her into the back and sat her at the very table she and the other girls had congregated around during their teenage years, eating far too many snacks and gossiping about boys. It all seemed like somebody else’s life.
Olivia explained what had happened in Brooklyn the night before while Jennifer placed a maple donut on a plate and listened intently.
“That Tyler. He always knows how to get himself into trouble,” she said.
“True. I know. What did I ever see in him? All those years, hung up on him in high school...”
“Come on. We’ve all loved people we shouldn’t have,” Jennifer said.
“Um, maybe most people can say that, but you can’t,” Olivia returned. “Joel was and still is pretty perfect. And now Derek...”
Jennifer shrugged. “Yeah, but look at everyone else. Mila just went on a date with a stalker. Amelia’s giving birth to a really mean guy’s baby. Camilla’s husband is about a million red flags all tied up into one man, but she still loves him to pieces.”
“I was kind of split about whether or not they should have gotten back together, to be honest,” Olivia said quietly.
“She seems happy, really happy. That’s all that matters, right?”
Olivia nodded. Jennifer poured her a cup of coffee, which she sipped gently.
“What can I do for you today?” Jennifer asked. “Anything?”
“Maybe you could stop time for a minute, so I could get some more sleep?”
“I’ll figure out time travel for the both of us,” Jennifer offered. “I’ve been burning the candle at both ends all year long. And goodness me, that Katama Lodge always needs me for one social media disaster after another.”
Olivia chuckled. “That whole incident with that celebrity Helen Skarsgaard was quite a show.”
“Yeah. I’m sure it was a show from here. From a PR standpoint, it was initially a disaster,” Jennifer said as she bugged her eyes out.
Olivia stood at the head of her class as the eight a.m. bells blared overhead. She was light-headed and woozy. She wished she would have brushed her teeth after that donut. She addressed her fourteen and fifteen-year-old freshmen with wet eyes, which threatened to spill tears.
“Who wants to read the next act in Romeo and Juliet?” she asked. “I need a Romeo and a Juliet.”
Nobody raised his or her hand. This was classic; a war between teacher and students. Finally, Olivia randomly pointed to a girl and a boy, both good-looking. This was a bit like playing with fire. Guaranteed, their hormones were pent up. After a few “thous” and “shalls,” they could very well fall in love, end up at prom together, and then wind up in the midst of a messy divorce twenty years down the road.
This was a poisonous thought.
The girl’s voice began meekly as she recited Juliet’s words:
“Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierc’ed the fearful hollow of thine ear...”
And in response, the Romeo of the group said, in a voice that wavered between deep and high, due to hormones, “It was the lark, the herald of the morn, no nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks do lace the severing clouds in yonder east... I must be gone and live, or stay and die.”
The class erupted with laughter. Olivia arched a brow and said, “You know, Romeo and Juliet were about your age in this play.” This shut them up again. Olivia instructed the two of them to continue their reading. Meanwhile, she reached back and stole a quick glance at her phone to see if Chelsea had sent any messages. Still nothing.