| |
Susan was good under pressure. She always supposed this was tied up in all the chaos of her teenage years. She had been the eldest daughter of three sisters, the one who’d had to take charge after everything had happened. As soon as she’d been able to, she had immediately moved away, had a baby; and then things had taken off for her after that. And she had never cracked.
This call from Aunt Kerry was no different.
She heard herself respond calmly. “I’ll get there as soon as I can. Thank you for calling, Aunt Kerry. Yes, I look forward to seeing you, too.”
During her final words, she heard the back door open and clip shut. The familiar footsteps of her daughter Amanda grew louder. Finally, Amanda appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, her hands on her hips and her eyebrows furrowed. Again, Susan felt that jolt of recognition. She was the spitting image of her beautiful mother, Anna. Anna. Dead at thirty-eight.
“What was that about?” Amanda asked, leaning against the door jamb.
“Aunt Kerry called. Apparently, Dad’s in the hospital,” Susan said.
Amanda looked worried, but Susan knew it was only for her sake. Amanda had only met her grandfather once, fifteen years before. She had been only six or seven years old at the time.
“Did she say what’s wrong?” She swept toward the fridge and opened it, an old ritual Susan really missed from the days when Amanda and Jake had lived at home. Back when they’d been a real family.
“They’re doing some tests. I don’t know,” Susan tried to explain. She leaned heavily against the counter. After the drama of seeing Penelope and Richard at the office, packing up her things, and feeling the pressure of leaving the home she had shared with him for the past era of her life—she felt exhausted, mentally drained. Now, there was this to worry about.
“And you’re really going to go there?” Amanda sounded doubtful as she slipped the top off a bottle of raspberry-cranberry juice and poured herself a small glass.
Susan hesitated. She had told her Aunt Kerry she could come immediately, without a second thought. In her ordinary life, this would have been outside her limits. She’d always had cases to work on, friends to see, Richard and the kids to take care of.
“I just mean, you haven’t been back to the Vineyard in like, what, twelve years?” Amanda asked as she took a sip from her glass.
“Fifteen,” Susan corrected. “And tell you the truth, I don’t know. But right now, I’ve closed my last case. Your father’s going to buy me out of the business and honestly, I don’t have anything to stay here for.”
“Jake and I take offense to that,” Amanda said with a smile. “I just know you planned to take six months for yourself—and this doesn’t sound like any kind of vacation, Mom.”
“Even if I’m just there for a few days, I think I should go. I would really regret it forever if something happened,” Susan said.
Susan glanced back through the rest of the apartment. She had packed up most of it so far, but there were a few odds and ends that she hadn’t had time to slip into boxes.
“Do you have an hour or two to help me with the last of this?” Susan asked. “I just realized that if I’m heading off to Martha’s Vineyard, I need to get this done. Maybe I can even catch the first ferry tomorrow if I drive to Falmouth tonight.”
“It’s still crazy that Dad’s kicking you out,” Amanda said. Her eyes glittered ominously. Since the divorce had finalized, she had been pretty vocal about her support of her mother. The secretary? She’s not much older than me! Had been the words she had screamed when she had learned of the real reason for the divorce.
“He’s not. I mean, not really. We came to an agreement that both suits us best. Besides, it’ll be nice to spend a bit more time with Samantha and Cody. With all the drama that’s happened, I feel like I missed a lot of their early years.”
“How can they be the cutest creatures in the world, but also the most evil?” Amanda asked, grinning widely.
It was true that the twins had spent the majority of their first few months of life screaming as loudly as possible. Jake had joked that they had set new sound records. Susan and Amanda had helped out as much as they could, given the fact that Susan had still practiced criminal law and Amanda had been smack-dab in the middle of undergrad at the time.
Amanda and Susan got to work on the last of the boxes. In less than thirty minutes, they had the last of it packed up in Susan’s Prius. She blinked down at the key, still attached to her car key ring. Did she feel ready to give it all up?
But no. She had to be quick about all this. There was no time to swim in her own nostalgia—not with her dad in the hospital.
If there was anything she had learned recently, it was that you never really knew how much time you had left. It was best not to waste it on things that no longer served you.
Susan entered the main house from the back and placed the keys on the marble countertops, which they’d had installed maybe five years before. There at those countertops, she had drunk countless glasses of French wine, poring over criminal documents, clacking her nails across the top in a way that had always irritated Richard. All those hours, when she had just assumed, stupidly, maybe, that this would be her life forever. A life to grow old next to someone.
There in the kitchen, she realized something: this was no longer her house. Although it was still suited up with the appliances she had picked, the wall color she had chosen, she knew the refrigerator was stocked with food she hadn’t bought, and even the air had a different smell to it. A perfume she had never worn. A sign that Richard and the house had moved on without her.
“Goodbye,” she murmured to the house as she placed the keys with a clank on the counter. “You were good to me. Maybe hold back just a tiny bit for the next round.”
Amanda followed Susan in her little Chevy for the fifteen minutes to her son Jake’s house. Jake worked as an engineer and made a hefty salary, despite his only twenty-five years of age. Susan was mesmerized with his incredible way with numbers. He had always been a bit more reserved and cerebral, something his wife Kristen laughed about since she was always such an extrovert. Still, their relationship balanced itself out really well. They were truly the perfect couple.
Jake was the spitting image of his dad at that age. He popped out of the garage and gave Amanda and Susan a wave as he popped the last of a chip into his mouth and chewed. When Susan got out of the car, he hugged her and said, “We’re so glad to have you here. You can stay however long as you want.”
But Amanda interjected before Susan had the chance to explain. “Mom’s going to Martha’s Vineyard.”
Jake’s blue eyes bugged out. “What?”
Susan felt on the spot. “Your grandfather is in the hospital. If I hurry, I can make it on the first ferry tomorrow. I just have to get to Falmouth tonight.”
“Grandpa Wes. Oh.” Jake formed the words like they were in a foreign language. Just like Amanda, the only real memories he had of his grandfather were Susan’s stories.
He was mean. Sometimes, a drinker. A work-a-holic.
He had ruined her life. He’d ruined her sisters’ lives.
And she had never forgiven him for any of it.
The thought struck her then like a smack across the cheek. She forced the thought away and smiled at her children as they opened the trunk of her Prius and helped her carry the boxes into the spare area of the house, which Kristen and Jake had reserved for her. Susan assumed she would be back in a few days, maybe a week at most, depending on the situation she was about to embark on.
Once they dropped off her things, Susan packed herself a suitcase and then reappeared in the kitchen. Samantha and Cody sat up in their high-chairs with little bibs across their chests. Samantha cooed and lifted her arms and said, “Grandma!” Cody smacked his plastic spoon against the high chair excitedly.
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait to leave tomorrow, Mom?” Jake asked from the stove. He stirred some pasta, an act she had never in her life seen Richard perform.
She’d at least done one thing right. Her son knew how to do household tasks.
“Aunt Kerry was really specific about coming as fast as I could. Besides, you know me. I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if I stayed,” Susan said. She dotted a kiss on Samantha and Cody’s foreheads and chuckled at their clownish reactions. “Is Kristen still at the school?”
“Yeah. She’s still coaching girls’ tennis. She’ll be home in a bit, but I guess she’ll miss you.”
“Give her my love, honey,” Susan said. She kissed her son on the cheek, then turned to hug Amanda goodbye. As she did, she remembered. “Shoot! You start your internship tomorrow, don’t you? I completely forgot.”
Amanda nodded. She had taken up an internship in a criminal law department at a nearby firm. At twenty-two, she would start law school that fall. Where was the time going?
“Call me after. I want to hear all about it,” Susan said, pointing a finger at her daughter.
“I haven’t even been to law school yet. They’ll probably just make me do paperwork,” Amanda said with a laugh.
“Doing paperwork is seventy-percent of every job in the world. I would have gone nuts without all that help from interns. You’re much more important than you know.”
Back in her Prius, her heart shifted and beat harder, louder. She checked the ferry times on her phone, shoving her thoughts back into the tiny recesses in the back of her mind. She kept a lot of things tucked away back there.
Things she didn’t want her children to know.
Things she didn’t want to face herself.
“Secretive.” This had been a way Richard had described her, too. In the end, it had been his secrets that had destroyed their marriage.
But there had always been things about Susan that Richard didn’t know.
She had preferred it that way. “You have to keep a bit of yourself for yourself,” she had told a girlfriend a long time ago.
It was still early evening. This would give Susan enough time to reach Falmouth and fall immediately into an Inn bed. She cranked the engine as another few texts buzzed through her phone.
Richard: Thanks for getting your stuff out. Sorry for the run-in today. I got my hours mixed up. Scheduling was always your strong-suit, not mine. Take care.
For a second, Susan contemplated telling Richard what she was about to do. Go to Martha’s Vineyard. See her father again for the first time in fifteen years. Face whatever was left of her past.
But Richard wasn’t a part of her life anymore. He was nothing to her now.
And she didn’t want to keep thinking about him.
She cranked the engine and eased her Prius back down the driveway. She had a ferry to catch.