That young man from art camp asked about you today when I picked up Emma,” Macy’s mother said that night at dinner. Max, who had been watching TV and picking at his dinner, suddenly looked interested. Macy looked down at her plate to avoid their eyes. She couldn’t explain what was happening either. She’d said a prayer on the beach, and suddenly her life’s theme song was “It’s Raining Men.”
Max balled up his napkin and threw it onto the table. It bounced and landed on Macy’s plate. She fished it out of her ketchup and made a face at him.
“What young man, Mom?” Max asked. “Since Macy doesn’t seem to want to know who you’re referring to.”
“There’s a nice young volunteer at Emma’s day camp. He’s really good with children, and he’s well-liked around here, Buzz says. His name’s Dockery Caldwell. Macy met him yesterday, but she didn’t go back today.” Her mother paused long enough to catch Macy’s eye. “He noticed your absence and asked after you.”
“Mom, are you seriously suggesting that I make some sort of play for this volunteer? I went on a date with Pastor Nate, and I’ve spent time with Buzz’s son. I think that’s quite enough for one trip, don’t you?” Macy laughed and stood up, picking up hers and Emma’s plates and going around the kitchen island to put them in the sink.
“Hey, I wasn’t done with my French fries!” Emma hollered.
Macy looked down at the one lone French fry on the plate. “Yes, you were!” she yelled back.
She heard Max offer to share his remaining fries with Emma. Typical. It would be a miracle if Emma didn’t turn out ruined from all the spoiling she got from the adults in her life. Macy smiled at the thought. There were worse things in life than to be loved that much.
Brenda came to stand beside her as Macy scraped the plates into the disposal and let the water carry the mess away. Before Brenda could speak, she turned on the disposal and let the grinding noise fill the silence. Not to be deterred, Brenda waited until Macy had no choice but to shut the empty disposal off.
“I just think you should be nice to him. I mean, he just wants to talk to you. And Buzz thinks very highly of him,” she added.
“So you’ve said,” Macy answered, placing the rinsed dishes in the dishwasher and closing it with a bang. “Buzz also thinks highly of his son, I would imagine.” She turned around to face her mother. “But I’m not the only woman with men pursuing her this trip, am I? What’s up with you and Buzz?” Macy had promised herself she would let whatever was going on between the two of them just play out, but she grasped at the first straw that presented itself in order to change the subject. She nearly retracted the question before she realized her mom was smiling as she began to answer.
“We’ve been spending some time together, and … it’s been nice. I had … forgotten how nice it can be just to have someone around. A man to share things with.” Her mother’s smile grew bigger as she spoke.
Macy studied her mother for a moment. “And is this something that’s going to go beyond this trip? Have y’all talked about this?”
Brenda threw her hands up. “Hey, we’re just having a good time!” she exclaimed. “Neither one of us wants to put a label on it.”
Macy grinned. “You sound like a kid, Mom.”
Brenda did a little twirl right there in the kitchen, her arms still raised. “I feel like a kid!” she said, giggling.
From the doorway, she heard Max’s voice and turned to see him there with his mouth open. “Do I even want to know?” he asked.
Macy laughed. “No. You do not want to know. Trust me.” Their mom started laughing in earnest and so did Macy. Hearing the chaos in the kitchen, Emma scampered in to join them, laughing with them even though she had no idea what was going on.
“I’m going to leave you crazy women to yourselves,” Max said.
It was only after they had stopped laughing and finished the rest of the dishes that Macy thought to wonder where he had gone in such a hurry and how he’d found transportation. Her stomach rumbled with worry as darkness fell. I am not my brother’s keeper, she told herself.
“How about we all pile into my bed and watch a movie?” her mother asked.
“Yay!” Emma cheered. “Movie! Movie! Movie!” she chanted as she did a lap around the kitchen, pumping her fist in the air.
Macy’s mother took out the large pot they used to make popcorn on the stove. Macy was glad to see it was still here after all these years. Her mother caught her eye, and she knew they were both thinking of her dad throwing the popcorn into the air and catching it with his mouth while they all laughed and applauded. They both looked away and blinked their eyes. There had been a lot of moments like this on the trip—memories popping up that were both painful and healing, like immersing a wound in water.
“Popcorn?” Brenda asked as she poured a layer of oil in the pan.
Macy heard Emma, who’d moved into the den, change her chant from “Movie!” to “Popcorn!”
“Sounds like a yes to me!” she said.
Her mother didn’t turn from the pan. “Tomorrow, I want you to be the one to pick Emma up from art camp, okay?”
Macy put her hands on her hips and dropped her head, knowing when she was beat. “Ooookaaay.” She sighed, sounding like the teenager she used to be when last she’d stood in this kitchen.
Brenda looked over at her. “I need you to do it anyway. Buzz would like to take me on a little adventure on the high seas in the morning.”
“Mom,” Macy said. “You’re incorrigible.”
Macy could hear the smile in her mother’s voice when she turned to watch the oil heating in the pot. “That’s me, all right,” Brenda said. “Being incorrigible feels pretty good.”
Macy grinned to herself as she left the room to find a family-friendly video to watch with her mom and daughter, the two women she loved best in the world. She went to her room to riffle through the movies she’d brought with them. Her phone vibrated on the dresser as she was digging through the suitcase, and with a sigh, she leaned over to grab it to see who was calling. It stopped ringing just before she picked it up.
She stared down at the Missed Call alert on the screen and then closed her eyes as she listened to the voices in the den: Emma’s excited one, her mom’s sweet one. She wanted to run out there and add her voice to the mix, pretend she had never seen the call and be absolved of her responsibility to call back. But she’d put it off long enough.
She held the phone in her hand for a moment longer, then pressed the button that dialed his number and hoped he wouldn’t answer so she could go on with her night. But of course he did.
“Yeah, Chase? Saw I missed a call from you.”
He paused. “I was about to step out for the night, so I’m glad you caught me.”
“Oh, that’s good.” She looked around the room, wishing she could be done with the conversation already.
“I actually called to tell you I’ve got some news.”
“Yeah?”
“I talked to my brother after you left the other day. Told him things weren’t working out between us — “
“I didn’t say that!”
She could hear his wry smile come through the phone. “You didn’t have to. So anyway, he’d told me that he had a friend who needed someone to work in IT for them. And he put me in touch with his friend, and it’s all happened quickly, but if I want the job, they say it’s mine. I just gotta get out there.”
“Out where?” Her heart sank as she thought about explaining to Emma that her daddy was leaving. Again. She thought of that night in the tent with Emma between them holding both their hands; of the dinners they’d had with each other around the tiny table that, though it hadn’t held more than two people before, had somehow expanded to hold three; of the way Emma had begged for Chase to come with them to the beach and how she—the mean mommy—had said no.
“Denver, Colorado.”
“Wow. That’s … out there,” was all she could manage to say.
“It’s a good job, Mace.”
“Good enough to take you away from your daughter again?” she challenged. Even if there was no future for Macy and Chase together, she still wanted Emma to have him in her life.
“Good enough that I’ll have the money to fly back to see her relatively often and to fly her out to see me when she’s older. She’ll love it out there. Denver is a beautiful place, you know.”
“So I hear.”
“You’re not seriously mad about this, are you?”
“No. I just — “ She sighed. “I just thought I’d have more time to figure everything out before you forced my hand.”
“I’m not forcing anything, Macy. I’m letting you go. Because I’m afraid if I don’t, you won’t be able to move on.”
“But I —”
“Macy, I think that if I stayed, you’d settle for me. Because you feel obligated. But we both know that’s not a good reason. And I’m sorry. For ruining what we had once by taking off. I was a stupid kid who ran away.”
Macy didn’t want to cover that emotional ground again. She sighed. “How soon do you leave?”
“Haven’t worked all that out yet. But it’ll be soon.”
“Wow.” Wyatt’s advice to her earlier that day had been timely. It was time to break free from Chase, time to move on.
“You know, Macy, I’ve thought a lot about what you said as you were leaving,” Chase said. “And I have a piece of advice for you. That little girl you talked about? The one who used to be fun? The one you said I never got a chance to know?”
Macy felt her cheeks growing warm with embarrassment when he brought up her comment. She was grateful he wasn’t standing in front of her. “Yes.”
“Find someone who recognizes her when he looks at you. You think you can do that?”
She looked up to see Brenda standing in her doorway with a broad grin, holding a two-liter of root beer and a carton of vanilla ice cream. Emma danced behind her.
“Come on, Mommy!” Emma shouted.
Macy held up a finger, and Brenda disappeared with Emma following behind, her eyes on the ice cream.
“Yeah,” she told Chase. “I think I can do that.” As she said it, she thought of Nate and Wyatt and—strangely enough—her mother’s mention of Dockery. She’d prayed for one man to come into her life, and it seemed God had sent three.
“Macy,” Chase said, “I’ve gotta go. I’ve got some people waiting on me. And it sounds like you do too.”
“So I’ll see you when we get back?”
“Yeah. For sure. See you then. Now go have fun.”
She ended the call and sat motionless on the bed for just a moment, thinking of his challenge for her to find someone who would recognize the little girl who still lived inside her, the little girl who had started drawing pictures in a guest book. To go forward, she had to resolve her past. Chase was wiser than he knew.
The sound of her daughter’s laughter interrupted her thoughts, and she realized the only thing she had to resolve at that moment was whether she wanted a Coke float or a root beer float. It was a good place to start the rest of her life.