Farah and I set our bags down near the steps and I kick off my shoes to drag my feet through the thick green lawn. Together we walk around the astrology house to the ocean view.
“I wish I could bottle that fresh-air-and-saltwater scent,” I say to Farah.
“Already planning your next caption?” Farah grins ruefully.
The three-hour drive to Stars Harbor Astrological Retreat took nearly four, due to the number of times I forced Farah to pull over to the side of the road to capture Instagrammable moments.
At an idyllic little farm stand, I hopped out of the car, the dust from the unpaved road coating my slides, and craned my neck, looking for a toddler I might be able to pass off as one of my own three girls.
“Is she too tall to be Dylan?”
“No, but too blond,” Farah said. “But that could be Clara in the blue stripes over there.”
I spotted the little girl near the sign for the pick-your-own strawberry patch. “You are a genius,” I told Farah.
I angled my phone for several perfectly framed shots of me smiling over the little girl’s back as she crouched with a basket of berries in the distance.
“Aren’t you billing this weekend as a romantic getaway, not our usual group family vacation?” Farah asked. I was surprised at the bitterness in her voice, but then again, I don’t normally rope her into my photo shoots; she doesn’t have the patience for the banality.
“I’m not posting these now. They’re for next week. It’s called scheduling content,” I said.
“I wish I could pre-deliver a baby so I could build in a little breathing room for next week.”
“Last one, I promise.”
The rest of the drive to Stars Harbor, I felt a bit nettled. My posts may appear frivolous to Farah, but a lot of hard work goes on behind the scenes to create lucrative content.
Since leaving the women’s magazine where I started my career, I’ve made a living posting to social media about the superficial parts of motherhood—how to remove ketchup stains, how to sleep train, how to make the perfect cake pops for classroom birthday celebrations. But there is nothing shallow about being a mother. Not for me. It’s the most rewarding, soul-searching journey I’ve ever taken.
Farah does not share my views about motherhood as a vocation, or social media as a job. Farah is a doctor, the most traditional of professions. She doesn’t have a clue about an influencer’s challenges in the parenting space. I have to keep tabs on the newest trends in clothing and gear, amass thousands of adorable shots per week when my subjects are cranky for the majority of the day, and manage a regular posting schedule for my sponsors down to the ideal hour of day to maximize the algorithm.
But Farah and I are drawn together by our differences, not repelled by them. We share a mutual respect for our individual choices. So I know it wasn’t my extended Instagram photo shoot that was bothering Farah on the drive. She sounded stressed, frazzled even, as she navigated traffic. Rather than peppering her with the questions on my mind, I gave her the space to work it out.
Now, seeing her open expression as we look out at the ocean, I ask, “Hey, is everything all right?”
Farah glances at me and then back at the horizon. “Beckett darted out in front of a car yesterday,” she says after a pause. “I was putting Cole in his car seat and Beckett took off across the street. A Mercedes was barreling past, but their emergency system kicked in. Stopped on a dime.”
“Was he okay?” I ask, horrified.
“Yeah, but he cried because he saw the ice cream truck and then it was gone. Not because he almost, you know, died.”
I can’t help but laugh at Farah’s dry delivery. She seems pleased by the break in the tension.
“He’s fine, I’m fine, everyone’s fine,” she says. “Joe asked me if I was on the phone. He thinks it’s my fault.”
“Joe is a politician; his default is blaming other people.”
Farah doesn’t say anything. She clearly feels responsible. Her read on Joe might even be a projection of her own guilt.
“It must have been so scary,” I say.
Farah nods. “I still hear the tires squealing in my head.”
I let the moment stretch out between us. Farah’s eyes are trained on the ocean ahead. I know there’s more to the story, but I trust that she’ll tell me when she’s ready.
“So should we go meet this astrologer? You googled her?” Farah asks, changing the subject.
“I would say I can’t believe you didn’t, but of course you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t have time for that nonsense,” Farah says.
“Okay, so what are you picturing?” I ask.
“A wrinkly old woman in a muumuu?”
“Exactly. But she’s young and she’s wearing cute pants.”
I flash the photo of Rini on her website. Her shiny brown hair is swept over one shoulder. Wrapped in a red peacoat, she sits on the front steps of the black-and-white Victorian home, staring straight into the camera with a closed-lip, mysterious smile.
“She looks so normal. How’d she become an astrologer?” Farah asks.
“That’s every twentysomething’s dream job,” I say. In the days leading up to this trip, I had googled the astrologer obsessively, and now I pull up some of the best headlines to read aloud. “ ‘Young entrepreneur revives hospitality on the North Fork and zoning law changes thwart her competition.’ ‘What can’t she do? Success in the stars for this whiz kid.’ She sounds like an ingenue, while I wasted my youth partying and churning out articles with clickbait headlines for thirty bucks a pop.”
Farah brushes my arm with her fingertips. “Oh, Aimee, you’re still young,” she says. As always, Farah sees through to the core of me.
“Forty is on the horizon,” I admit.
“In three years.”
Ignoring Farah’s insistence, I fixate on Rini. Her youth isn’t the only thing nagging at me. I zoom in on the picture with my thumb and pointer finger, but I can’t place her, or the feeling.
“Well, I’m glad we’re doing this. The house is certainly pretty,” Farah says. “Shall we check in?”
It’s not our usual modern luxury resort, but it is charming. The Victorian house on the bluff. Green manicured lawns. The ocean in the background. The graveled road leading to the house is framed with tall knotty trees, their limbs gnarled in disjointed directions. The character of this home is so real that it greets us at the door, along with the astrologer, who introduces herself.
“This place is beautiful,” I say. As for meeting Rini, she doesn’t look as vaguely familiar in person.
Rini leads us around the first floor, pointing out the amenities and specialty rooms with practiced perfection. I notice the library is stocked with every Audra Rose novel in print and smile to myself. Rini couldn’t possibly know it’s my Adam who writes as Audra Rose, but he will be thrilled to see his thirteen published books displayed like treasure.
We ascend the grand staircase to the second level, where Rini explains that we are forbidden from using any of the rooms in the second wing unless we want to incur “exorbitant” housekeeping charges. Farah laps it up; she loves rules.
“What about the turrets?” Farah asks.
“There’s no access to them,” Rini answers tersely, as if she’s been asked that a million times before.
“Too bad, I bet the view is amazing from there.”
Rini leans in conspiratorially. “Can you keep a secret?”
Farah and I nod at the same time. Farah might be discreet, but I’m the one who’s as impenetrable as a vault.
“They’re purely decorative,” Rini states.
“Why? That’s such a waste,” I say.
“The zoning code would have recategorized me as a three-story B and B rather than a two-story vacation rental and that would have subjected me to more regulation without adding any bedrooms for increased capacity.”
“Ah, well, from the press it sounds like you’ve done right to stay in the good graces of the zoning authorities,” Farah says.
Rini clasps her hands behind her back, and I wonder if they teach that in Hospitality 101.
“Well, that’s it for now. Any questions?”
“None, thank you,” Farah says.
“Actually, yes,” I say at the same time. “She’s an obstetrician. We were at a farm stand earlier, and she said something that stuck with me.”
“What did I say?” Farah asks.
“You said you wished you could pre-deliver a baby.”
“That was a joke.”
“I know you were teasing me, but I thought, ‘Isn’t that what a scheduled C-section is?’ ”
“No, that’s not the same as banking content for TikTok.”
“I didn’t want to argue about my ‘work,’ ” I say, putting air quotes around the word like she does.
“Ladies?” Rini interjects.
I shoot Farah a look that asks her to be patient with me, the way I am with her. I turn to Rini to explain.
“When we filled out the forms for our readings, you asked for our date and time of birth. If a birth is planned ahead of time, do you think that messes up the baby’s destiny? Or what about the mother’s destiny?”
A previous Aimee would have ridiculed the idea that our fate was fixed by some unseen force. Old Aimee knew what she wanted out of life and did everything in her power to achieve it, from submitting extra credit for higher grades in school to breaking up with Adam when he didn’t propose on the right timeline. My specific actions led to my Columbia acceptance letter, and to Adam showing up the next week with a diamond ring. Nothing could have carried me somewhere I didn’t want to go. And nothing could have stood in my way of where I wanted to be.
Yet in the last few years, I’ve found myself believing more in woo-woo ideas like fate and karma. Even this very conversation feels like evidence of their existence. How many times has Farah seen a post of me and the girls go up on social media during the exact minute we’re outside her office having lunch? Enough to know I schedule content ahead of time, and she’s never once said she wishes she could pre-deliver a baby. Not until the moment I have an opportunity to ask an expert. An unseen force has to be at play.
“Aimee, you didn’t have C-sections,” Farah says, confused.
She’s right, obviously, but the question is a metaphor. Could I have made a choice a long time ago that altered this very moment, and I’m the idiot who thinks she’s still driving the bus? Are our futures determined by our pasts? I can’t bear to hear the answer to that direct question, so I ask about C-sections.
“What an interesting inquiry,” Rini says. I smile.
All I’ve ever wanted is a picture-perfect life. The recipe for which is a lot of hard work in the setup, dozens of tries to get it right, and a sprinkle of good lighting.
Place the devoted romance-writer husband by my side. Snap. One magazine-worthy duplex on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Snap. One yummy baby. Snap. Another angelic girl. Snap. A third perfect daughter. Snap.
Me, front and center. The best light, the best angle. Snap.
Lately I’m scared that the next time I capture a shot, the camera shutter will close and—poof—it’s all gone. Collapsed under the weight of a mistake so old that it predates Instagram Stories. A choice that won’t disappear after twenty-four hours no matter how I try to archive it.