Seattle, Washington, 2009
“Patrick, are you ready? The girls are going to be late!”
In the front hallway, Carolina Anderson looked in the entryway mirror, pulling her straight, blond hair up into a twist and securing it hastily with a clip. Leaning in closer, she peered into the glass and wiped away a tiny smudge of mascara that had strayed down onto her cheek.
“Losing your touch, old lady,” she mumbled to herself, checking the rest of her face for any other slip-ups. She wore minimal make-up, just enough to highlight her sharp-green eyes, her delicate cheekbones. A bit of blush here and a swish of lip gloss there and she was done. But sometimes, when she was in a rush, accidents happened…
“Patrick!” she called again, stepping back now and smoothing down her tailored, black suit jacket with her palms. Reaching up, she adjusted the collar of her white shirt and her clutch of long necklaces, silver and black and gold.
Well, you don’t look too bad for forty-two, she told herself, taking a moment to appreciate how well this new suit fit her. All those long, early morning power walks were paying off. She was toned, svelte and naturally petite—and feeling pretty good about her looks, age be damned.
She smiled and turned away from the mirror, her morning ritual complete.
“Pat—”
“Coming, Mother,” said her seventeen-year-old son as he bounded down the stairs, backpack swinging from his shoulder. “And don’t worry, no one will be late.”
She sauntered toward him, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floor and resounding off the high foyer ceiling. Pulling a ring of keys from her jacket pocket, she dangled them on an outstretched finger, keeping them just out of the boy’s reach.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
He smiled at her, the same big, beaming grin he’d had since he was a boy. Reaching up, Carolina smoothed back his hair, wavy like his father’s.
Patrick leaned over and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Readier than you will ever know.”
She smiled back at her son, glad to see him so happy. Patrick had always been such a serious boy, so studious and responsible, so wise. Perhaps that was why Carolina had felt it was alright to let him begin driving his younger sisters—Lindsay, sixteen, and Alexis, twelve—to school a couple times a week, on days when he had to stay late in the afternoons for hockey practice. Then, he could just drive himself home, rather than waiting for Carolina to get there.
He reached for the keys. Instinctively, she snatched them back into her fist.
“No speeding,” she warned him. “I don’t care if you’re all late. You drive the limit and not one mile over, understood?”
“Yes, Mom,” Patrick replied gently, not even trying to sound like he wasn’t patronizing her.
Reaching up, she tousled his hair, then released the key ring to him. “I know you’ll be fine,” she said, following him into the kitchen as he turned to go. “But you can’t blame me for worrying, now, can you?”
“Worrying about what?” In the kitchen, Carolina’s husband, David, was standing at the island in the middle of the room, newspaper in one hand and mug of coffee in the other. He didn’t look up at her as he spoke, but continued scanning the headlines.
As Patrick ran out the door, Carolina followed him, pausing just inside the house. She raised a hand and waved at her daughters, who were already in the car, belted in and waiting to leave.
“Bye, girls, love you!” she called to them. “You too, Pat!” she added as he backed the car out, and then they were gone.
“Worrying about what?” David repeated, now standing behind her. He still sipped on his coffee but had replaced the newspaper with his briefcase.
Turning to look at him, Carolina’s lips stretched into an involuntary smile. After twenty-one years of marriage, she still found that face of his so comforting, his smile so handsome. He still cut quite a dashing figure in his suit and tie; in fact, every year he looked more distinguished. More like the CEO that he was.
“You know,” she told him, putting an arm around his neck and pulling him in for a hug. “Everything and nothing all at once.”
“Hey, watch the make-up.” David backed up from her abruptly, bringing a hand up to brush his shoulder. She watched his preening, a sinking feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. What he’d said to her hadn’t been mean, just off-hand and maybe slightly inconsiderate. If he’d been thinking more about her and less about a speck of powder on his suit, he might have seen that she was feeling a little needy, and that a hug could have put her mind at ease.
“Hey, don’t worry about Patrick.” David kissed her goodbye, then handed her his coffee cup and disappeared through the doorway and out of the house. Carolina watched him get into his BMW and speed off, cell phone already in his hand. He probably had a conference call scheduled for the drive in. Just Carolina’s SUV was left in the carport.
Moving back into the kitchen, she pulled her own cell phone out of her jacket pocket and checked the time: ten minutes until she had to get out of there herself. One of the nice things about owning her own business—an advertising agency, one of the busiest in the city—was that she could set her own hours.
She laughed at herself. “So why aren’t I going in at noon and leaving at three?” she wondered aloud, then busied herself with picking up the dishes the children had left scattered across the table.
Trundling across the room with a load of half-full cereal bowls and sticky-rimmed juice glasses, she stacked them in the sink, then paused to look out the window onto their massive property. The pool. The three-car garage. The landscaping—Japanese maple trees, hydrangea bushes in bloom, a koi pond with a bridge. A deck, a barbecue the size of a battleship.
Carolina sighed, wondering why sometimes she just didn’t feel like it was enough.
She shook her head to rid it of these thoughts, then moved across the room again and into the small office off the side of the eating area. She and David each had their own separate offices down the hallway, for those nights—and there were many—when they brought their work home with them. This was just a little work station, a place for the phone, the corkboard with their bills tacked to it, the in and out boxes for mail and other messages.
Sitting down in the rolling chair behind the room’s small desk, Carolina picked up a stack of unopened envelopes and flipped through them. A letter from the local business-owners’ association; something from a national advertising society in which she was a nominal member. Something from David’s alumni association; a notice from Alexis’ tennis club. A postcard from her friend Janet, who was in Tahiti, and another from Ann on vacation in Brazil. Three mailers from various charities she had supported in the past.
So much correspondence, so many words. “I sure lead a full life on paper.”
Putting aside the rest of the mail, she kept the charity envelopes and went through them one by one. She spent a lot of her free time—and her business time as well, when the opportunities arose—supporting various causes, from local animal shelters to helping the homeless to preserving the parks and gardens of greater Seattle. Being so well off herself, she believed in giving something back to her community, to society, to the world. Charity work made her feel a little more whole, as if she were doing something that mattered.
At the very least, it filled up her time so that she just didn’t have to stop and think too much.
“Seattle Cancer Coalition,” she said at the last envelope, a familiar logo stamped on its reverse. This was one of her favorites, a group that raised money for research into all forms of the disease. Her beloved grandmother had succumbed to colon cancer several years earlier, so this charity held a special place in Carolina’s heart. She always did whatever she could to help them.
Tearing open the envelope, she took out the letter and scanned it quickly, standing up and moving back into the kitchen as she did so.
“Annual fundraising dinner,” she read as she retrieved her bag and keys by the door. “May twenty-fifth, eight o’clock.”
She paused, free hand on the doorknob.
“May twenty-fifth.”
Pulling out her cell phone one more time, she clicked on the touchscreen and looked at the date.
“Damn it! That’s tonight!”
She hoped she still had time to RSVP.