Amelia 
GLORY DAYS
I DIDN’T CONSIDER MYSELF THE kind of girl who runs home to her mother, but as soon as I left that doctor’s office, I wasn’t able to control my urge to buy a plane ticket home. Maybe I needed something familiar to anchor me back to earth, or maybe I wanted to get the unpleasantness of telling my family over with.
After a sleepless night in a hotel that was quite luxurious but left me feeling even lonelier, I boarded a plane home that early morning, sunglasses over my eyes, which were swollen and blurry from crying and lack of sleep. As I shoved my carry-on into the overhead compartment, a simple ding on my phone—a reminder of Martin’s birthday party—sent me back into sobs, prompting the woman in front of me to look at me with a mixture of pity and disgust. Thad and I loved Martin’s birthday parties. And Martin was my friend. I got to keep him in the divorce.
I wanted to tell Martin so, but I couldn’t risk anyone knowing what was going on until I told my parents. They were going to be outraged and devastated; the last thing I needed was for them to hear the news from someone else first.
I sat down in my window seat in the very last row of the plane, the only seat available so last-minute. I pulled out my phone and texted Nanette, my editor. So sorry, N. I can’t make it in today. Major emergency. Flying home to Cape Carolina. I will fill you in on all when I get back.
Typing bubbles appeared immediately, followed by Nanette’s response: Oh no, babe. You okay? Can I help? Anything you need. Take as much time as you want. I’m here for you.
I knew she was. I also knew she was panicking because we were supposed to be putting the December issue of Clematis to bed today, and while Nanette had the technical skills and know-how to do it herself, she depended on me, her managing editor, the deputy to her sheriff, for far more than I thought she even realized.
I tapped my thumb on the group text my oldest friends, Sarah, Jennifer, and Madison, kept going at all times. We had grown up together, and the three of them had returned to Cape Carolina. I was the only outlier who had moved away for good. I wanted to tell them. I needed to tell them—at least that I was coming home, if not the reason why. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it yet.
As I leaned my head against the plane window, watching Palm Beach become smaller and smaller and then fade to white, I couldn’t think about next steps. All I could think about was how to tell my mother. My mother loved me more than anything, but she also had ideas about how my life was going to turn out. I thought she would be disappointed in me. My divorce was a mark on her sterling reputation.
But then I had a thought that neither consoled me nor made me feel worse: Thad had never really been mine. I had been a part of a life he was trying to live, a pawn in a game that he had tried to play and lost. A tiny part of me pitied him, felt sad he had spent years living a life that must have felt like it was the wrong size and color. But I think what worried me most of all was that I really, truly hadn’t known.
In fact, I used to feel sorry for my friends. Their marriages were so boring. Thad and I went dancing, we took art classes, we traveled on a whim, we laughed all the time. I couldn’t reconcile how the man who told me how beautiful I was, who looked at me with pure admiration, was the one who had betrayed me.
Thad had called and texted me no fewer than twenty-five times. I didn’t want to read his texts, but I couldn’t help it. The last one was a gut punch. Amelia, I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.
It was a relief. I hadn’t been that stupid. Thad and I did have real love. It was just the lust part that was missing. I’ll admit that we hadn’t had a hot and steamy sex life. Maybe it wasn’t as good as our conversations over coffee about the art opening we’d gone to the night before or our long, rambling walks through Palm Beach’s elite neighborhoods, where Thad would have me in stitches over his renditions of the secret lives behind those bougainvillea walls.
I reasoned that a girl can’t have everything. While my friends complained about their husbands not wanting to take them out or go on vacations or watch Bravo, my small concern seemed paltry. Thad and I had fun. We had love. The lust would be gone eventually anyway, I justified. I was married to my best friend.
I fell asleep, my face pressed against the plastic window, jolting awake when the plane touched down. Shocked that I’d slept through the entire flight, I powered my phone up, and, momentarily forgetting what had transpired, I, out of habit, said sleepily, “Hey, Siri, text Thad. Landed.”
My phone rang, and I immediately realized my mistake. This was going to take some getting used to. “Thad,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Oh, Amelia,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I was going to tell you. I swear I was.”
“But it never seemed like the right time to destroy my entire life?” I responded angrily.
“Let’s talk about this,” he said.
“I can’t. I have to go ruin my parents’ lives now, too.”
“Amelia,” he said sadly. “I do love you. I swear I do. I wanted to be different for you. I tried.”
“Do not make me feel sorry for you, Thad,” I said softly, knowing he was telling the truth. “I can’t go there yet.”
“Okay,” he whispered. “Please just promise you’ll call me. Please, Amelia.” Then he added, “I miss you already.”
I wanted to say something sarcastic like, Well, I’m sure Chase will soothe your hurt feelings, but I could tell he meant it. For a brief moment, I thought maybe we could move forward in a different way. But no. I didn’t want to live a lie. I felt like all the blood was draining out of my body into my feet. I was light-headed from a sorrow so deep tears felt too ordinary, too trite.
“I’ll let you know when I get back,” I said noncommittally. “But I’m not sure I can be around you right now.”
“I understand,” he said softly. “But please call me if you need me. Please let me know if I can help.” He paused. “I really am sorry,” he added one more time. “I didn’t want to lose you, and that was selfish.”
“Goodbye, Thad,” I said, his name foreign in my mouth. It wasn’t a Bye for now! or a See you next week! It was goodbye. For good.
After leaning on my carry-on in the cramped aisle of the plane for an interminably long time, I walked down the steps and onto the tarmac, wrapping my sweater tighter around me. The two-gate airport was small, clean, bright, and lovely in every way. Home.
Remembering I still had Thad’s credit card, I charged a rental Mercedes convertible that he couldn’t afford and, with Taylor Swift blaring over the Bluetooth, put the top down and cranked the heat. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I felt free. With the wind in my hair and water all around me, maybe I would be okay.
My parents’ house in Cape Carolina could only be described as rambling. And thank goodness. Because thirty-eight years earlier, my aunt Tilley had—as Southerners describe it—gotten “the vapors.” She still had them. People said my mama and daddy should put her in a home.
My father was all for it. But my mother said she wasn’t going to abandon her sister. So the east wing was converted into an apartment for Aunt Tilley, with a bedroom, bathroom, living room, dining room, and a kitchenette with a refrigerator and microwave—nothing that Aunt Tilley could use to burn the house down. Or so my parents thought. The fire department had to come that one time Aunt Tilley put a frozen macaroni and cheese into the microwave for sixty minutes instead of six minutes. But Chris at the appliance store rewired it so that it would only turn on for one minute at a time, an idea of my brother Robby’s that he hadn’t been able to figure out how to implement.
Chris had been two grades above me in high school, and he could rewire anything, including Principal Trusken’s car. How he got it onto the roof of the school remains an urban legend. He and his friends all had to go to summer school and didn’t graduate on time because of it, but if they could, they would do it again. Glory days are fleeting. One must make the absolute most of them.
The classic white colonial might have seemed out of place compared to the beach houses that had taken up residence all around it, with their cedar shakes and hardy board siding. But this grand estate at the long end of a narrow peninsula—alone except for the Thaysdens’ house beside it—was the oldest home on the beach. Saxtons had lived in this house for hundreds of years. We had moved into it when I was seven, after my grandparents retired to Florida. I knew every back staircase and hidden nook, every ghost, every creak of the stairwell. And I loved it all. As I drove down the long, live-oak-lined street, I smiled at how the ancient trees made a canopy over me. Not for the first time, I thought that I would love to live here one day. It seemed a little bit crazy, since I wouldn’t have children to brighten the shadowy corners or fill the antique beds.
But Robby and his wife, Trina, already had three adorable but very rowdy boys. They, no doubt, would be the next Saxtons to inhabit Dogwood. I always teased them that when they moved in, I would take over Aunt Tilley’s apartment. Every Southerner needed a batty relative living in the attic—or, in this case, the east wing. Trina would squeal and go on and on about how much fun we would have while Robby looked horrified. I shuddered, thinking of it now. It had been all fun and games until my recurring nightmare about turning into Aunt Tilley had started.
I had a hard time deciding whether to go see Daddy at the farm first or to head straight home. I figured that, either way, my parents’ worlds were about to be shattered by the news that their golden girl had disappointed them.
I decided to go home first. As much as they drove me crazy, I really couldn’t get enough of Mom and Aunt Tilley, especially when they were together, a little codependent disaster area full of hairspray.
I pulled into the grassy lot—well, mostly dead grass, since it was winter—that served as Dogwood’s overflow parking, opened the door, and was finally embraced by the smell of the salt air that had begun wafting in through the lowered convertible top the moment I reached the beach. As I stepped out of the car, it actually brought tears to my eyes. When I lived here, I got used to it, couldn’t smell it. After a day or two, I would lose it again. But, for now, it was the scent of coming home.
Despite the near-Christmas chill in the air, Mom and Tilley were sitting side by side in rocking chairs on the front porch when I pulled up in my rental car, Mom in a pair of sensible but stylish black pants and a yellow double-breasted jacket and Aunt Tilley in a white lace corset dress with matching parasol. She really seemed normal a lot of the time. This was not one of those times.
They both stood and began squealing for me to hurry up, waving their arms and gesturing to me, but they wouldn’t step off the porch, as though contained by an invisible fence. The porch floor was, as always, painted black for winter, to attract heat and keep it warmer. In the summer, it would return to the palest gray. The ceiling remained blue all year long to keep the evil spirits away. (And the mosquitoes.) But my separation from Thad was one evil spirit even the bluest of blue couldn’t scare off. Long and healthy marriages were a hallmark of the Saxton family, and I was ruining that streak.
“My baby!” Mom said, as Tilley lilted, “Liabelle!”
Even their joy couldn’t keep me from noticing the two broken spindles on the front porch and that the house, which would look stately to anyone else, seemed to sag a little. If I’d had time to think about it, it would have scared me. But I didn’t have time to be afraid because I had barely gotten over the threshold, the expansive water view beyond the porch nearly blinding, before “You are much too thin” and “Darlin’, you look exhausted” began. Tilley was dragging me inside, toward the kitchen. Stepping over the threshold felt so good. I loved the worn Persian rugs and the English antiques that had been inside this house for generations. I loved that I could see the soothing water from almost every room. Tilley was cutting me a slice of fresh pecan pie on the familiar blue-and-white tile counter when the doorbell rang and Mom went out to answer it.
I had just swallowed the first sweet, delicious bite when I heard Mom say, “Why, Parker Thaysden! To what do we owe the pleasure?” On her lips, the words sounded like “Parkah” and “pleashah.”
Aunt Tilley gasped and pointed her fork at me. “You are seeing Parker Thaysden, aren’t you? Admit it!”
“Aunt Tilley, I’m married to”—I cleared my throat—“to Thad.”
She was saying, “You can take the girl out of Cape Carolina—” but stopped herself when Mom and Parker walked into the kitchen, Mom saying, “Liabelle, you have a visitor.”
“A gentleman caller!” Tilley trilled.
I rolled my eyes and whispered, “He is not a gentleman caller.”
“Well, he’s a gentleman, and he’s not calling on us old ladies,” Tilley said, kissing Parker on both cheeks.
Parker looked terribly amused, while I was hoping the floor would open up and swallow me. I grabbed his wrist and said, “I am so sorry, Parker. Let’s go out on the porch.”
“But I want some of Aunt Tilley’s pie,” he whined.
“Oh, I’ll bring you some, sugah,” she said.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I whisper-shouted as we made our way to the door.
I had grown up with Parker, thinking of him as that annoying younger boy who wouldn’t leave me alone at church. I mean, he had always been cute, obviously. But I wasn’t a member of his fan club, one of the hordes of girls that swooned over him.
No one had been more shocked when one of my idols had chosen to marry him. I wanted to call Greer up and say, Parker Thaysden? Do you realize that this kid used to hang worms out of his nostrils?
But I had gained a new respect for Parker when Greer had died. He had loved her in the way that every woman dreams of being loved. He honored her every day during and since, some might say too much. But I thought people were too cynical. They had forgotten that true love never dies. I guessed I would never know what that was like.
“Amelia, you can’t tell a man that you have something really important to talk to him about and then leave him hanging like that,” he said as Aunt Tilley wordlessly delivered a piece of pie to him and slipped away as best one could in a five-foot hoopskirt.
I rolled my eyes. “This is a little bit insane.”
He shrugged. “I tried to tell you yesterday that I was on my way here, but you hung up too quickly.”
“Ohhhh…” Well, that made more sense.
We both sat down, and he looked at me expectantly. I hadn’t planned what I would say yet, how I would deliver this earthshaking news. I had other earthshaking news I’d been preoccupied with delivering.
“Hey,” he whispered between bites. “I’m really sorry about Thad.”
“Parker!” I hissed, looking around.
“I know, I know. I figured you came home to tell them. But it’s a small town. Word gets around.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s been, like, a day.”
He shrugged. “Chase does my copy editor’s hair.” He added, behind his hand, conspiratorially, “And if it makes you feel better, word around the salon is that he had no idea that Thad was married, and he is pissed. They are done. Chase isn’t anyone’s side piece.” He looked at me very seriously.
While he worked hard to hold a straight face, I had my first good laugh since yesterday morning. That maybe Thad wasn’t going to get his happily ever after made me feel the tiniest bit better.
“Thank you,” I said. “That helps. Even though there is no way in the world he didn’t know Thad and I were married.”
“Okay,” Parker said impatiently. “We’ve done you. What about me?”
I took both his hands in mine and looked him in the eyes. Something like panic crossed his face, and I dropped them. “Oh my God. This isn’t like a confession of love or something. You wish.”
He smirked. “Okay, well, I mean, I don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first one I’ve gotten in the past few years. I’m not totally unlovable.”
I shook my head, but he was right. He wasn’t. Sometimes when you’ve known someone his whole life, you forget that his blue eyes are incredibly soulful and his tousled hair is both boyish and manly at the same time. “I found out something that I shouldn’t know, and I shouldn’t tell you, but I feel like I have to.” I paused. “There’s an off chance that you don’t want to know or that you already know, and that I’m sticking my nose in where it isn’t—”
“For God’s sake, Amelia, spit it out,” Parker said.
“Wanted,” I whispered. I bit my lip. I wanted to stall, to rewind and figure out how to deliver this news tactfully, with grace. But he was right in front of me, so that seemed more than a little out of the question now. For half a beat, I wondered if, when the dust settled, Parker would let me interview him for my story. But I scolded myself. This was more important than any story.
“Look, I was reporting on what people do when they don’t use their embryos, and I sort of accidentally saw that your embryos are on the abandoned list. And maybe you’re ignoring them and quit paying for storage on purpose, and that’s fine…”
I rambled while he looked at me blankly.
“You know,” I added, “the embryos that you and Greer froze—”
“I know which embryos,” he practically spat.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He pulled out his phone, which I thought was an odd reaction. I thought maybe I should leave. But then he said, “Yes. This is Parker Thaysden, and I want to check on my embryos. I wasn’t sure if there was an invoice I missed or something.” He paused. “They are not abandoned,” he said, venom in his voice. “Uh-huh. Well, yeah. It would be hard for Mrs. Thaysden to return your calls from that number, since she has been dead for three years.” He rolled his eyes.
He pulled out his wallet, removed his credit card, read off the numbers, and then hung up the phone. He looked at me, but I could tell he wasn’t seeing me. “What now?” he asked.
It was not the response I was imagining. “What do you mean, what now? I have absolutely no idea.”
“I can’t destroy them,” he said. “They’re all I have left of her.”
“You could adopt them out,” I suggested warily.
He shot me a look. “Are you serious? They’re Greer’s. I can’t give them to a stranger.”
I shook my head. “Well,” I said quietly, “there are a lot of people who donate theirs to science. I bet they could be used for something really targeted, maybe even ovarian cancer research, something that would honor Greer’s memory.”
Parker nodded. He leaned forward and rubbed his temples. “Maybe so,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have told you, should I?” I whispered.
Parker opened his eyes, but he didn’t answer. “Aunt Tilley,” he called in the direction of the screen door. “I’m gonna need the rest of that pie!”
I smiled at him cautiously, one hundred percent sure that he was cracking up, but then cracking up myself when I saw that Aunt Tilley was actually delivering the entire pie pan—minus the two pieces we had already eaten—with a fork.
“I’m not sure pie is going to take care of the problem,” I said, smirking.
“You don’t know that,” Parker said, his mouth full.
“My pie can solve absolutely anything,” Aunt Tilley said.
Maybe she was right. Because by the time he had finished that pie (The whole thing. I’m serious.), I got the sneaking suspicion that, even though he hadn’t deemed it appropriate to share with me yet, Parker Thaysden knew exactly what he was going to do.