| |
That night, Jennifer drove back toward the hospital with her heart in her throat. Her hands gripped the steering wheel with such force that her knuckles turned bright white. Once inside the hospital, she stalled for a second, leaned against the wall and inhaled sharply.
“Mom?”
Jennifer glanced up to see her handsome son approach. He held two coffees in his outstretched hands, and his black hair wafted back behind his ears. When he reached her, he placed both coffees on the ground and threw his arms around her.
“Nick. I didn’t know you’d be here,” Jennifer said into his shoulder. She could hardly translate to her only son just how much she’d needed this hug. It was a lifeline.
“I just got here a bit ago,” Nick said as their hug broke. “Grandpa and I have been in Grandma’s room. He sent me to grab him some coffee.”
Jennifer stiffened at the mention of her father. “That’s good.” It had to be good. Coffee was much better than beer. It was better than hard liquor. It was better.
Maybe her father had really heard her rage the previous evening. Maybe he’d decided to take steps toward fighting his urge to drink.
Maybe. She could only hope.
“I heard a rumor that you managed the bakery today,” Nick said as they walked toward her mother’s hospital room. His smile waned. “I hope you know you don’t have to do that. You have enough on your plate. You manage your own business, for goodness sake.”
Jennifer rolled her eyes. “I’ll say it again. I won’t allow Mom’s business go under just because of all of this. Frosted Delights needs me.”
“Just as long as you promise you’ll find time to rest,” Nick returned.
Jennifer laughed lightly. How in the world could she possibly explain to her only son that she felt as if she had nothing left in life. At nearly forty-one, she felt empty inside, even though she had been through so many beautiful and horrible events in her lifetime. And now, it felt as though she had better be prepared to handle the events that were about to happen. The social media business and Frosted Delights Bakery felt like nothing compared to the weight of what was currently going on with her parents.
Once inside the hospital room, Jennifer was careful not to make eye contact with her father. He took the cup of coffee and thanked Nick. There was one thing about her father: he loved his grandson more than maybe every other person on the planet. The two of them had been thick as thieves back in the day, when Jennifer had been barely a twenty-something, trying to make ends meet as a new wife and mother.
And obviously, everyone at the Conrad family had had a Michelle-sized hole in their heart. Nick had done his best to fill it.
“She was awake a little bit earlier,” Nick said. “She didn’t have much to say, really, but she did ask where you were.”
“And you told her?” Jennifer asked.
Nick nodded. “You’ve never seen a woman look more relieved in your life.”
On cue, Ariane’s face began to fidget. Her mouth erupted with a yawn, even as the machines beside her continued to beep. A moment later, her eyes opened so delicately that Jennifer was reminded of a sunrise. If you stared at it too long, you were never quite sure exactly when it came up over the horizon line, until suddenly, there it was.
“Jen...” her mother whispered.
Jennifer reached across the bed and gripped her hand. She hadn’t realized just how frightened she’d been that she would never be allowed a chance to speak with her mother again. Her heart surged with love.
“I heard you were at the bakery all day today,” she murmured and then licked her lips. “I can’t believe it. You really shouldn’t have.”
Jennifer shook out her red tresses. “Don’t be silly, Mom. I know how much that bakery means to you and besides, you know I’d do anything to get a chance to steal a donut.”
Her mother chuckled lightly. “You always were stealing those donuts. You and Michelle. If I didn’t watch you close enough, you would eat the entire batch and we would have to bake more.”
Her mother paused and swallowed. A moment of pain seemed to pass over her; proof of it etched across her face.
“I just hope you aren’t killing yourself over there,” she said. “I know you have so much to do.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mom. Really. I can handle it.”
After a pause, her mother tilted her head back toward the other side of the room. Her eyes scanned over John Conrad, who seemed physically drained and pale.
“You doing okay at home, John?” she asked. Her voice was strangely flat, void of any emotion.
Was this still more proof of whatever state their relationship was currently in?
“Right as rain, Ariane,” John told her. “You know I can handle it all by myself.”
Ariane shifted. She seemed to want to say something—probably something along the lines of, sure, as long as you have a bottle in your hand. But then she glanced at Nick and seemed to think better of it.
“My handsome grandson,” she said. “Where is that beautiful fiancé of yours?”
“Still a tiny bit under the weather, Grandma.”
“Tell her to rest up so we can have her around for Christmas. I’ve always loved Stacy,” Ariane said. “She’s the kind of girl you keep around for a long time.”
“I’m doing my best, Grandma,” Nick said. “Got down on one knee and everything.”
“That’s right,” Ariane flashed him a weak smile. A shadow passed over her eyes. “I can’t wait for it. A wedding in the family again.”
There seemed to be a hesitation in her words, as though Ariane feared she wouldn’t make it to the wedding. Jennifer gripped her hand a tiny bit harder and said, “It’s a good thing we can get all this bad health stuff out of the way early. It’ll be smooth-sailing till summertime.”
“That’s right,” Nick said. His eyes were red with doubt. “Can’t wait.”
After Ariane fell back to sleep, Jennifer, Nick, and John walked back into the hallway. Jennifer’s father had been rather quiet the previous half-hour or so, and his cheeks were hollowed out and strange. Jennifer imagined that he was just hungover.
“Let’s all have dinner later this week,” Jennifer suggested. “I want to clean up the house before Mom’s cleared to come home.”
John stiffened, as though he wanted to protest. But Nick chimed in first to say, “That sounds great to me. I’ll ask Stacy what day works best.”
“Maybe Tuesday or Wednesday?” Jennifer said. “Since she’ll probably be back Thursday or Friday.”
**
THE FOLLOWING WEEK was a kind of a blur. Jennifer found herself scrambling for time to breathe. She spent most mornings at her social media office, monitoring all fifteen of her high-caliber celebrity and influencer accounts, taking Skype meetings with various clients, and speaking with Samantha about the next steps. Samantha was chipper, bright, and easy to converse with, which made Jennifer feel as though her business was in incredibly good hands. As she wrapped up a final meeting later in the week, she told Samantha that she insisted on boosting her position from “intern” to “account’s manager.”
Samantha’s face was as bright as the moon. She flung her arms around Jennifer and said, “Oh my gosh! Are you serious?”
“I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you, Sam,” Jennifer told her. “Seriously. Now that I have to manage the bakery, handle my mother’s care, and deal with all the Christmas drama, I don’t know how I could do any of this without you. You deserve a pay raise and a better title. Period. Let’s talk about it in more detail on Monday.”
Saturday morning played out much the same way the previous week had. Jennifer found herself at the cash register of Frosted Delights Bakery, handling orders, calling out to Connie in the back, digging herself into sticky messes with far too many cinnamon rolls. Camilla had to work at the hospital, unfortunately, which left Jennifer to admit just how much her being there the previous week had saved them.
When they closed up shop at four-thirty that afternoon, Jennifer entered her mother’s office and went through the mail. There were several official-looking letters, things that deserved the kind of attention Jennifer didn’t fully have at the moment.
Before she was able to open them, Nick called her to say that he’d just brought his grandmother back from the hospital. “Her wheelchair is pretty hefty, but it seems like she can get around the kitchen, dining room, and living room pretty well. It was a good idea to set up the piano room as her bedroom. She seemed at ease when me and Grandpa told her she didn’t have to go upstairs.”
“Thanks for getting her, Nick,” Jennifer said. “Seriously. You saved me today.”
“Come on. We’re here for each other,” Nick replied.
“I’m going to pick up pizzas on the way over,” Jennifer said. “Is everyone hungry?”
“In the Conrad family? You know we’re always hungry,” Nick said.
Jennifer ordered three large pizzas from their local pizza place: a sausage and pepperoni, a vegetarian, and a ham and pineapple, which her father loved. As she slipped back into her car with the warm cardboard boxes in-hand, she felt a jolt of sadness. She’d gotten three pizzas because she was accustomed to including Joel in the calibration of how much food they required. Without Joel, three enormous pizzas was more food than they knew what to do with.
But when Jennifer entered her mother’s kitchen, she was grateful to find Stacy, pouring three glasses of wine. Stacy was a trim and athletic twenty-year-old girl with long, flowing blonde hair. She had an oval face, blue eyes and an easy smile that welcomed you when you looked at her. Jennifer had grown so accustomed to the girl, so much so that her love for her felt tremendously close to the love she had for Nick.
“Jen!” Stacy said. She hugged her soon-to-be-mother-in-law close and then stepped back. “I hope you aren’t killing yourself with all the work you’re doing.”
“Nick’s told you, I guess.”
“He’s worried. We all are,” Stacy admitted.
Jennifer laughed. What could this twenty-year-old know about hard work? “Don’t worry about me. I feel better than ever. And I’m glad you’re here. I got too much pizza.”
“I think we’ll find a way to eat it,” Stacy said as she took a sip of her wine.
Jennifer walked into the piano room to find her mother seated in her wheelchair. Nick sat on the bed in conversation with her, his large hands on his lap as he leaned closer. There were rumbling sounds of the television from the living room, playing an old war movie John Conrad loved so much.
“There she is,” Jennifer said as she ducked closer and hugged her mother tenderly.
“Hi there,” Ariane smiled. She heaved a sigh as Jennifer stepped back. “It’s a bit weird to be an invalid in my own house.”
“You’re no invalid,” Jennifer argued. “Wherever you want to go, we’ll take you.”
“That’s sweet, honey. How did it go at the bakery today?”
“Just as busy as ever. The people of Edgartown would do anything for your sweets,” Jennifer said.
Ariane chuckled. “The secret’s in the sugar. They tell me it’s addictive.”
“You’re evil, Mom.”
“Just a little,” Ariane said with a wink.
They managed to get the wheelchair back into the living room, then attacked the issue of the televised war movie. John was really resistant about turning it off.
“Maybe we could just listen to some Christmas music?” Jennifer asked. Her voice was strained.
Her father grumbled as he stood, walked over and turned off the television. Hurriedly, Stacy leaped up and connected her phone to the speaker system. In seconds, there was the sound of “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.”
“Hard to believe it’s almost Christmas,” her mother said sadly as she struggled through a tiny bit of vegetarian pizza.
“We still need to get more decorations up around here,” Jennifer agreed as she glanced toward the Christmas tree in the corner, which was really only half-decorated. Jennifer cursed herself for not finishing the decoration before her mother’s arrival back home.
John grunted as he took a sip of his beer. He looked strained and agitated, as though he wanted to drink all of it at once and then move on to something harder. Jennifer’s eyes found the photo of Michelle in the corner. She looked at her with all the love and sadness she could muster: please, Michelle. Help me out here. Everything feels much, much darker than ever before.
After dinner, John turned back on the old war film and began to describe to Nick the events they’d already missed. Stacy and Jennifer returned to the kitchen to put away the leftover pizza and pour themselves more wine as Ariane followed in her wheelchair. Stacy chattered a bit about the upcoming wedding, about the dress she had her eye on, and about how many bridesmaids she might have in her party.
“I didn’t have any at mine,” Ariane said with a laugh. “Although I’ll never forget your wedding, Jen. You and those four dears. You had them all dressed up in seafoam green, you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Jennifer replied. “Mila and Olivia sewed the dresses after I picked out the fabric.”
“That’s right.” Ariane’s grin was sad and nostalgic at the same time. “Nick was only a little thing. I remember I was in charge of him for a lot of the ceremony. He was so busy and excited, watching his parents get married like that.”
Jennifer’s heart surged at the memory. Just after she and Joel had kissed at the altar, she’d turned and gotten Nick from her mother’s arms. She’d held him there between herself and Joel, as Joel’s thick arms had wrapped around them both. She’d felt so safe, so wanted, so alive at that moment, even as everything had ached with sadness for Michelle’s death.
“You’ll have a young thing like that yourself, soon,” Ariane said.
Stacy blushed. If Jennifer had to guess, there was probably a great deal more to that blush than just excitement about the future. Probably, Stacy was frightened to say goodbye to her previous life of youth; probably, she was frightened to become a wife, a mother, and fall into the roles that both Jennifer and Ariane had been playing for decades.
“Whenever you want,” Jennifer said with a smile. “No rush at all. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
Stacy gave her a grateful smile, even as silence fell around them. Jennifer reached for the pile of letters that she had brought back from the bakery and ripped one of them open. As she unfolded it, she was grateful that her mother and Stacy had found their way into another conversation.
Seconds later, however, Jennifer couldn’t help herself from saying: “No. What the heck is this...”
It was an official letter, the kind of thing Jennifer had been used to when she’d worked at a legal office for a number of years back in her twenties and early thirties. The letter was ominous, strange, referring to her mother as “business owner Ariane Conrad.”
And the letter demanded that they exit the premises of the bakery by the end of the year, to ensure that it could be demolished in the approaching months to make way for a “new development.”
“What’s wrong?” Stacy asked her.
Her mother’s eyebrow lifted with confusion. She studied Jennifer’s face with an ominous expression. Jennifer tried to fix her look, force her lips downward and her eyes toward the floor.
“Nothing really,” Jennifer said. “I just thought of something that happened with this celebrity, Ursula. We’re handling her social media account and—”
But her mother was far too clever for Jennifer’s lie. Ariane reached across the counter, grabbed the letter with much more strength than a stroke victim should have had, and then unfurled it out across her lap. She studied the letter for a long time, then blinked up toward Jennifer with cat-like eyes.
“You have to call Amelia,” she said.
“Amelia?” Jennifer breathed.
Her mother nodded. “She’s Director of Operations for Business Development on the Vineyard, isn’t she? If there’s anything she knows how to handle, it’s this.”
Jennifer knew she was right. Still, having another horrible event pop up in the midst of all the other chaos they’d been through over the previous week did not thrill her. Not in the least.