“Yeah?”
He nodded. “Truth be told, I was glad you ran away. I felt like I couldn’t breathe when I saw you.”
I could feel my heartbeat relaxing back to normal. “Me, too.”
I took a few steps until I was close enough to see his face. It still had that childish roundness to it, and his eyes were still measured, steady, black as ink stains.
Jack grinned at me. That same old grin like we were teenagers sneaking out to smooch on the dock. But we weren’t. We were all grown up now. I wasn’t sure why, but it pained me to remember that.
“How are you?” I asked, cheering in my mind that I had said something, anything normal.
He nodded. “Fine. You?”
I shrugged. “The girls are coming home.”
He smiled. “How wonderful.” He looked out at his line. “Ansley, listen. We have each lived a lifetime since we last saw one another. There’s nothing that hasn’t changed.” He paused. “Well, I mean, I still have great hair, but otherwise . . .” We both laughed, and I could have hugged him for lightening the moment. “Sheldon is redoing my boat. I’d love it if you’d decorate it while I’m here. It would make my life so much easier.”
My face moved in a way that made us both know that I was about to say “no.”
“You don’t even have to see me,” he said. “You can do whatever you want.”
I didn’t say anything, and he added, “Sheldon says you’re the best yacht designer this side of the Mason-Dixon.”
I put my hands on my hips. “You mean he thinks there are better ones on the other side of the Mason-Dixon?”
I think that’s when we both knew I was going to say yes. I sighed. “I’ll come look at it later in the week.” I added under my breath, “I’ll show Sheldon which side of the Mason-Dixon is better.”
Jack laughed. We both saw the tug on his line. The way he moved when reeling it in was so familiar that, for an instant, it was as if we had rewound the clock forty years.
“I hope you caught a good one,” I said.
He reeled it in, glanced at it, and then held his gaze on me a little too long as he said, “Oh, I did.”
My mind was miraculously still as I paddled home. Once inside, I didn’t have long to consider the ramifications of Jack being in Peachtree before my phone beeped. From beneath the glass screen cover that my store manager, Leah, had given me to keep my fingers from looking as though I had taken them to a mandolin until I could get to the phone store, I saw: Caroline: Plane leaving in 5. Flight 791. Will grab an Uber when we get there.
I laughed. Grab an Uber. Oh, that child. Did she honestly think we had Uber here? I checked her flight status and saw that she and Vivi would be arriving in an hour and a half.
I texted Leah: Any chance you could open today? My daughter is arriving at 10:30 . . .
She pinged back immediately: Sure. Be there at quarter to 10.
The good thing about a town this small was that you couldn’t live more than a ten-minute walk from anywhere. So when you needed someone, it didn’t take long to track her down.
I turned the shower on, stepping onto the mosaic marble tile, the steam fogging the solid glass door. I didn’t think of it often, but this morning I remembered the putrid harvest-gold color this entire bathroom had been. After Carter’s death, when we moved here, I didn’t have the money to change it. I think Sloane started to realize then that something was up. But not Caroline. She was so wrapped up in being mad at me—to deflect the pain and anguish of her father dying in such a sudden and gruesome way, I think—that she hadn’t realized my spending habits had drastically changed.
At least her bathroom tile was white. I would have heard about that, too.
I felt that familiar pain around my heart even thinking about that time in my life, that pulsating feeling like it was literally breaking in two. It was a feeling I had never known until Carter died, one I had believed to be something that sounded romantic, a figment of some gifted writer’s imagination. But once you’ve felt it, once you know what it’s like for your emotional pain to be so deep that it becomes physical, you never forget it. Nearly every day for sixteen years, I had felt that pain. Not all day every day, like I once did. But every day, in some small way, that pain was there.
I tied my hair up on top of my head to avoid getting it wet while I washed my body. There was no time for drying and styling. The airport was thirty minutes away, and more than anything, I needed coffee. And maybe a little bit of Kyle. But definitely coffee.
I stepped out of the shower and stood in front of my mirror, examining the lines around my eyes and mouth, pulling and poking at them a bit, wondering if I should try some of those fillers my best friends Sandra and Emily were always raving about, immediately deciding I couldn’t possibly watch a needle coming at my face. I took longer than usual with my makeup, knowing that it would be heavily criticized by Caroline no matter how good I thought it looked. I believed in my heart that she was trying to help. But our lives didn’t remotely resemble each other. She was a New York City socialite. I designed beach houses in flip-flops. We were apples and oranges.
While I was getting ready, I instructed Siri, “Call Mom.”
Much to my surprise, Siri did call Mom, as opposed to getting directions to the mall or searching the Web for pillows.
“Hello-o,” Mom sang.
“Hi, Mom.” I loved it when she was chipper like this. “How’s Florida?”
“Darling, Florida is as fabulous as ever. It’s warm, it’s sunny, the eligible men keep coming.”
I laughed. That was the difference between my mom and me. After my dad died, she was sad, of course. She did her year as the dutiful mourning widow, and then she got back in the saddle. I, on the other hand, had spent sixteen years too paralyzed to move forward.
“Well, you won’t believe this,” I said.
“Try me.”
I swiped blush on my cheeks, thinking that my mom and my daughter would both be happy about that. “All three of the girls are coming home.”
She laughed. “You’re kidding me. Are you happy? Terrified?”
I paused. “Yes.”
We both laughed.
“I heard James was going to be a television star,” Mom said.
I cleared my throat. “Um. Yeah. You could say that.”
“Oh, darling,” she said. “This, too, shall pass. I’ll come down to visit while all my girls are there.”
I heard a muffled sound in the background, followed by “Oh, goodness. I’m almost late for bridge. Love you!”
“Love you, too,” I said. But she was already gone.