Elizabeth A SENSE OF URGENCY

I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY EYES. At first, I wanted to call the police. Who were the vagrants swimming outside my house? I was about to walk outside to tell them to scram when I realized it: That girl laughing with wet hair streaming down her back? That was my daughter.

I got out my phone. LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW.

Olivia: I am trying to sleep, which you know is almost impossible these days.

Elizabeth: OLIVIA, GET UP.

Olivia: Is your phone stuck on caps again?

Elizabeth: No. I am trying to convey a SENSE OF URGENCY.

Olivia: All right. I’m getting up.

Olivia: Call 911! There are intruders in the sound.

Olivia: Wait. Is that who I think it is?

Elizabeth: Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?

Olivia: No way. Absolutely no way. They aren’t together. Are they? Wouldn’t they have told us?

This was getting ridiculous. I called her.

“Are they together together?” Olivia asked breathlessly.

“Yes,” I whispered sarcastically, tiptoeing out of the bedroom. “I’ve known for weeks, and I’ve just been keeping it from you.”

“Ha ha,” she said. “Okay, fine. I knew Parker was coming home, but I didn’t know he was coming with Amelia.”

“What if this is just a fling?” I asked. “Like, they met up at the airport and they are drunk and making out in the sound.”

“Don’t even tease about that,” Olivia snapped.

“I’m not teasing, Olivia.” I glanced down at my coffee table, my eye catching Greer’s last book. Other People’s Problems. I grinned, because wanting their kids to be happy… That was someone else’s problem. For now, it seemed that mine both were.

“Whatever you do,” I said, “do not ask them about this. If they want us to know, they’ll tell us.”

“But…” she whined.

“But nothing, Olivia. Promise me.”

“Well…”

“If you don’t promise me right now, I’m going to quit sharing these fun secrets with you. When I see something scandalous, I’m just going to keep it to myself.” We both knew that was a lie. What was the fun of even knowing a secret in the first place if you didn’t have a best friend to tell?

Falling quiet, we both knew what the other was thinking: this phase of our lives was about to be over. Well, no, not entirely. Charles and I were only moving one hundred yards to the east. But I would no longer be calling Olivia from precisely the same places I had called her from since we were kids.

Ever upbeat, she tried to bolster me. A good portion of Olivia’s childhood memories, too, were tied up in Dogwood, maybe just as many as in her own home. Nothing would change. But so would everything. But neither of us said it, so the thought just lingered in the air, each of us picking it up and putting it back down again, letting it float off into the dark night.

“Fine.” She sighed. “I won’t say anything.” She paused. “But do you think it could possibly be true?”

I had cried myself to sleep for several nights after Amelia broke up with Harris. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to find a man who could love her the way she deserved to be loved. And I’d thought he was the man who could do that.

I couldn’t fathom why she had broken up with him. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, and yes, as much as I hate to admit it, I had been a little ugly to her about it. But I’m her mother, and I know best. At least, I thought I knew best. I had been bugging Amelia for weeks, mercilessly, about why on God’s green earth she had let that perfect man go. And now, watching her kiss the boy next door in the dark, in the sound, knowing I should look away, I finally understood.