My feet feel heavy, planted like one of the palm trees outside The Broken Crown, the bakery café Jill opened last year. I’m so proud of her for going after her dream, for picking herself up and thriving after Adam left her and the kids for a woman closer to their age than his. I knew he had a wandering eye, and I always suspected he did more than look. But for her sake, I wish I hadn’t been right.
One of those friends who’s more like family, Jill has been there since before the beginning, back when we were kids without a care in the world building sandcastles and chasing waves at the beach. She was there when Tommy and I first crossed the line from friendship to something more, and she was the first one I called when I found out I was pregnant—before I even told Tommy.
I cried on the phone, telling her how I wanted to be happy about the news, but I was terrified. I lived in Atlanta and Tommy was still living in Destin. A relationship could work long-distance, but I knew that was no way to raise a kid. I didn’t want to give up the career I had already sacrificed so much for, and Tommy had his practice in Destin. She let me talk until my voice was worn out, then she reminded me what I knew all along—that Tommy would move heaven and earth to have a family with me.
And she was right. I barely got the words “I’m pregnant” out before he said he was moving up to Atlanta. That was the first time he asked me to marry him. I can still picture him pulling into my driveway. He was so excited, he tried to get out of the car before unbuckling his seatbelt. He dropped to one knee, right there on the blacktop.
I took his hands in mine and pulled him back to his feet. Tommy knew how I felt about marriage—but he still looked disappointed when I told him no. His expression changed back to joy when I brought his hands to my belly. The baby was our future, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
Jill was there for me through all of it, and now, she’s going to be here for me, with me, through the end. I’m more grateful for that than anything, so I should be running up the stairs to see her. But I can’t make myself move.
The bell on the front door jingles a welcoming chime and I look up to see a woman with rusty-red hair and a face full of freckles holding the door open for me. Her smile takes me back to all of the summers when we were kids, younger than our kids are now.
“Are you just going to stand out there all day?”
The sound of Jill’s voice brings tears to my eyes. I shake my head and slowly walk up the steps to where she’s waiting.
“Your shoes,” I say, looking down to the bright pink Crocs on her feet, “are hideous.”
Jill laughs and folds me into her arms. I rest my head on her shoulder, and the moment I let myself relax, everything that’s been building up is released in a tidal wave of tears.
“Shhh,” she says, smoothing my hair the way I used to do with CeCe back when she still let me comfort her. Jill breaks out of our embrace but doesn’t let go of my hand as she leads me inside, past the crowded tables, behind the counter, and through the swinging double doors where a petite woman wearing a flour-covered apron is clearly in the middle of something. “Can you give us a minute, Lou?”
“But the tortes . . . ,” the woman says.
“They’ll be fine, I’ve got them,” Jill assures her.
The woman’s eyes avoid mine as she looks around the room, as though she’s not sure where else to go. “They need to come out of the oven in thirteen minutes. And then the glaze—”
“I said I’ve got it, Lou,” Jill says, her voice more assertive.
Lou smiles awkwardly, her eyes briefly meeting mine before she pushes through the doors toward the restaurant part of the café.
“Sit,” Jill says, pulling a wooden stool up to the industrial island.
“I’m sorry,” I manage to say between tears. “I’ve been so good at holding myself together.” I stop talking to wipe my nose, which is running as much as my eyes.
“Here.” Jill hands me a clean dishrag. “And you have nothing to be sorry about.” Her brown eyes are shining with tears of her own.
Jill pulls another stool up next to mine. “I want to ask how you’re doing, but I know it’s probably the dumbest question in the world.”
“It’s not,” I say, wiping away what’s hopefully the last of my tears. “And in spite of how it looks at the moment, I’m actually doing kind of okay.”
“Looks like you’re doing better than I would be.”
I shake my head. Jill is already doing better than I am. The how, the what, and the why of our current situations are different, but the end result is the same. Of all the things I imagined for Jill and me to be doing together as we grew older, raising kids on our own was not one of them.
As hard as it might be now, I know Abigail and Beau are better off without Adam being such a big presence in their lives. Even when we were kids, Adam acted like the world was his, and we were just along for the ride. If he wanted something, he took it, and he didn’t give a damn about the wreck he left in his wake.
When Jill first told me about their friendship-to-love story, she romanticized the slow dance she and Adam shared to “Satellite” by Dave Matthews. They were both at the senior prom with other dates, but the night ended with the two of them in the back of Adam’s pickup truck. By the end of summer, Jill had traded her dreams of culinary school for a shotgun wedding. They lost the baby, but the marriage unfortunately stuck.
I like to think that if I had been there, I could have helped Jill see that she had other options. Even if she had the baby, she didn’t have to marry him. Because even at his best, Adam Carter was a one-night-stand kind of guy.
He was nothing like Tommy. Who even now is at home, unpacking our suitcases before going to the grocery store. I am the worst caregiver in the history of caregivers. It’s so pathetic I have to laugh.
Jill raises an eyebrow. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I say, but I can’t stop laughing. “Everything.”
Jill looks at me like I’m a crazy person, and I’m afraid she may be right. I bend over and focus on my breathing to slow the laughter down. I know all too well that laughter is just one step removed from tears, and I’ve cried all that I care to for one day.
Once the laughter has faded and my breathing is back to normal, I gather the courage to ask the question that I’ve been dying to ask, especially since I noticed the production trailers lined up down the street from the café.
“Have you seen her?” I ask, raising an eyebrow so Jill knows which “her” I’m talking about. As if there could be any other.
“She’s been in a few times,” Jill admits. I try to hide the disappointment on my face, but Jill sees right through me. “It’s not like I can turn customers away. They’re shooting right down the street. But she only comes in one day a week—I don’t think her part is that big.”
“Can you believe she’s playing a mother?” I try to keep my tone light so Jill knows I’m not upset with her. And I’m not, not really. I’m just surprised because Jill is supposed to hate Monica even more than I do.
Back then, almost sixteen years ago, Destin was just a blip on my memory. Whenever I thought about the place I spent so many summers, Tommy and Jill were frozen in time, still twelve-year-olds on the beach where I’d left them. Not adults dealing with unfaithful husbands and evil, deceitful wives.
But Jill had a front-row seat to the destruction when Monica left Tommy with a broken heart—from both the sudden end of their marriage and the child that would never be. To hear Jill tell the story, she didn’t care much for Monica even before their relationship turned sour. I can’t imagine a world where all of that would be forgotten, much less forgiven.
“If you tell anyone I’ll deny it,” Jill says. “But I spit in her coffee. Hocked a good loogie in there.”
“You didn’t!”
“No.” Jill shakes her head. “I didn’t. I just gave her a quick smile and hid in the back. Mature, right?”
“More mature than I would be.” I’ve thought about what I would do if I ran into her. In my mind, it would play out in different ways depending on whether I was with Tommy or on my own. I’d have an advantage if it was just me since she’d have no idea who I was or how I was even peripherally connected to her life. One good thing about the fact that I wasn’t there back then.
Of course, like Jill, I don’t know if I’d have the nerve to do any of the things I imagined, but it was therapeutic to think about.
I’m about to tell Jill one of the scenarios that involves my car and a parking lot when I notice an unpleasant smell overpowering the sweet notes that filled the room just moments ago. “Is something burning?” I ask.
“The tortes!” we say at the same time. I move out of the way as she runs around the island and opens the industrial oven, letting black smoke billow out. Oops.
Lou rushes back into the kitchen, taking charge. “I’ve got it,” she says, stepping in front of Jill.
If I didn’t know any better, I might think Lou was the boss. She grabs the towel hanging from her side and reaches into the oven, pulling out the tray of ruined tortes. She sets the hot pan down and one by one dumps the burned shells into the trash can.
“I am so sorry.” It seems like trouble is following me everywhere I go these days.
“It’s my fault,” Jill says. “I forgot.”
“Because I was distracting you.”
“Nonsense, it’s fine. We’ll make another batch.”
“We will, will we?” Lou says, giving her a look that lets me know their relationship goes beyond boss and employee.
“Lou will,” Jill admits. “Lou will make everything better like she always does.”
Lou blushes, humbly turning her face down, and I decide instantly that I like her. “I’m Lexie,” I say, slipping into my childhood nickname like I always do when I’m back in Destin. I extend my hand, but Lou hesitates before shaking it, pausing to wipe her hands on her apron first.
Jill shakes her head. “I didn’t introduce you?”
“I didn’t give you much of a chance,” I say.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Lou mumbles, stringing her words together. Her cheeks are still flushed and she won’t quite meet my eye.
“I’d be lost without Lou,” Jill says. “She’s my head chef and manager and sometimes my therapist.”
“We make a good team,” Lou agrees, still not making eye contact. The way she’s fidgeting, it’s obvious she wants us to clear out so she can get back to work.
“The best,” Jill says. “And Lexie is one of my oldest, closest friends. She’s the one who came up with the name The Broken Crown.”
“Jill talks about you all the time, how talented you are,” Lou says as she goes back to dumping the last of the torte shells. “How’d you come up with the name?”
“I knew it had to be something in the nursery rhyme world because of the whole Jack and Jill thing.”
Jill shakes her head. She’s always hated the fact that her parents named her and her twin brother after a nursery rhyme, but one of my favorite childhood pastimes was making bad jokes, like asking her or Jack to go fetch me a pail of water.
“I looked up the actual rhyme and it jumped out at me in the first stanza: ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water/Jack fell down and broke his crown . . .’”
“‘And Jill came tumbling after,’” she says, curtsying.
“I always thought it had to do with that story about you at homecoming,” Lou says.
“What story about you at homecoming?” I thought I knew all of Jill’s stories.
“It’s nothing.” But by the shade of red her cheeks are turning, I can tell it’s anything but nothing.
“Spill,” I demand.
“It’s not a big deal.” She turns and heads to the pantry to get ingredients for the replacement tortes. “I was nominated homecoming queen senior year.”
“You never told me that!” I hated these reminders that life went on in all the years I was gone.
“Because it’s embarrassing.” She starts to weigh out the ingredients, but Lou shoos her away and takes over.
“I want to see pictures!”
“Never.” Jill shakes her head. “Besides, there aren’t any. I lost the title before pictures were even taken.”
“You were dethroned?” I ask. “How did I not know this?”
“It’s hardly something I brag about.”
“But you told Lou!”
“Lou and I spend about a thousand hours a week together.”
“There aren’t that many hours in a week,” I say, not bothering to do the actual math.
“I’ve told Lou a lot of stories about you,” she says, trying unsuccessfully to change the subject.
“You leave me out of this,” Lou tells Jill.
I laugh, feeling more normal than I have since Tommy got sick. And just like that, it’s back on my mind, a shadow over everything.
Jill must notice the shift in my demeanor, because she’s instantly back by my side. “We should let Lou get back to work.”
“Of course.” I stand up. “I’m sorry, again.”
“Nonsense, accidents happen.”
“It was really nice to meet you.”
“Don’t be a stranger,” Lou says, finally meeting my eyes. Her gray eyes sparkle, and I would compliment them if I didn’t think it would make her even more uncomfortable.
“You made quite the impression,” Jill says as we walk back into the front room.
“With Lou? She was probably scared I’d start crying again.”
“She liked you,” Jill says.
“Aunt Lexie?” I hear a soft voice behind me.
I turn around, my arms open, greedy for more love. Abigail hesitates before timidly stepping in for the hug. I pull back from the embrace to get a better look at her.
Almost eighteen, Abigail is timid, but beautiful in a quiet, unassuming way. The ice-blue eyes she inherited from Adam are striking and her strawberry-blond hair hangs past her elbows. She’s got her mom’s fair complexion and the perfect amount of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
I bring her back in for another hug. “It is so good to see you.”
“How’s Uncle Tommy?” she asks, stepping back toward the counter.
I glance back at Jill, not sure how much she’s told the kids. Her sad smile tells me all I need to know. “He’s doing okay, sweetie. He’s going to be so excited to see you.”
Abigail looks down, her long hair falling in front of her face. She pushes it back, looking toward her mom. “Can I go see him?”
Jill shakes her head. “Not now, Ab. Let’s let them get settled first.”
Abigail looks disappointed but doesn’t push.
“I should probably get back,” I say.
“Dinner tomorrow?” Jill asks, sounding as eager to see Tommy as Abigail.
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll make something special,” Jill says.
“No, let’s go out,” I say. “Camille’s for old times’ sake?”
“Can I come?” Abigail asks, looking back and forth between us.
“Of course you can,” I answer for Jill. “Everyone’s invited, even your brother.”
Abigail rolls her eyes, and this time, I don’t hold back my smile at the apparent sibling rivalry Jill said had gotten even worse since Adam left.
I wonder sometimes how different things would be if CeCe had a brother or sister. If he or she would be another person for CeCe to bicker with, or if the two of them would pair up against me.
We thought about it, Tommy more than I did. As two only children, we agreed it would be nice for CeCe to have someone else, but the timing was never right.
And now, we’re all out of time.