I shook my head. “You never wanted children, Jack.”
He shook his head. “I know what I said, but if it’s you and me and the baby, I think it could be kind of great.” He paused and looked at me again. “Stay, Ansley.”
Another chill ran through me, a dread that this was not what we had agreed to, a horror that I had made a colossal mistake. But, in that, I realized: I was thinking about it. And that was what scared me most of all.
It took only a few minutes of considering leaving Carter, bringing this baby back to Peachtree Bluff, and living with Jack for me to realize that if I was meant to be with Jack, I would have been. But I wasn’t. I was meant to be with Carter.
And now I felt like I was where I was meant to be once again. The girls were home. I was going to decorate Jack’s house. I wasn’t even nervous about leaving everyone for Mom’s doctor’s appointment. She had fought me tooth and nail on this for weeks. But after the episode a couple of days ago, that feeling in my gut that this was more than just normal, old-age forgetfulness kept nagging me. We were going to a neurologist in Athens late that afternoon, and I wouldn’t hear another word about it.
“Hey, Mom,” I said nonchalantly, walking into her room. She was making her bed. I had hated it when she arrived in Peachtree Bluff in that cast and was so reliant on us. Her independent streak was one of my favorite things about her, and even at eighty-three, she was going strong. That same independent streak was, of course, the thing that had driven this deep, seemingly impenetrable wedge between us. But so many of the things in our lives are a bit of a double-edged sword. The mere thought of her losing her mind was too much for me to take.
“Let’s go out to lunch,” I said.
She looked at me suspiciously. “Your three daughters just got home from six days at sea and you want to take me out to lunch?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.” Then I winked at her. “If I’m gone I don’t have to help with the laundry.” I paused. “Plus, we’ve had practically no quality time together since you got here.”
She perched herself at the end of her freshly made bed and said, “Speaking of, I wanted to talk to you about that. I’m as good as new, and I think it’s time for me to go home.”
I could feel the shock on my face, though I wasn’t sure why. Of course my mom was going to want to go back to Florida, to her friends and her life. But as my brother Scott and I had discussed many times, her age was starting to show, and she needed to be here where I could keep an eye on her. Scott’s travel reporting kept him on the road or in the sky all the time, and it wasn’t like my brother John even spoke to any of us. This was the only option. Only, none of us had had the nerve to break it to Mom yet. And, quite frankly, if I was going to play caregiver for the rest of her days, I didn’t feel like it was my responsibility to break that news to her.
I gave Mom my most pitiful look. “Couldn’t you stay a couple more weeks? Until I get Sloane back on her feet? There’s so much going on here, and I could really use your help.”
Mom took the two steps to her walker, patted my shoulder, and said, “Sure, sweetheart. Whatever you need.”
I couldn’t believe that worked.
I helped Mom into the car, and she said, “Why don’t we go to one of those divine waterfront restaurants? My treat.”
Eighty-three-year-olds and three-year-olds are essentially the same. Slow. Stubborn. Extremely opinionated. But eighty-three-year-olds generally have better table manners, so, overall, they’re better lunch companions.
Verbena was our favorite waterfront restaurant, but I hadn’t been there in a while. White tablecloths and two-hour lunches weren’t exactly my speed these days. Mom and I both ordered tea service instead of lunch. There was nothing better than those little sandwiches with the crusts removed and tiny brownies, lemon squares, and macarons.
“So how long do you think it will be?” Mom asked.
I knew without clarification that she meant until we heard about Adam. “I hope soon,” I said. “The waiting is the worst part.”
She nodded. “You know all about that.”
The waiting when Carter died had nearly killed me. And I was never one of the lucky ones who knew. I never had remains or a DNA sample; I had no wallet, no shoes. Nothing. I never had any real closure. Of course, I had known the entire time that he was gone. But there’s always that voice in the back of your head that tells you to keep hoping, keep searching, keep believing.
Mom smiled at the waitress as she served us. “Thank you.”
I placed my green tea bag in the white porcelain pot. Mom selected Earl Grey, as usual. She was kind of a tea purist, except when it came to Kyle. If Kyle fixed her anything at all, she would bat her eyelashes at him and tell him it was divine.
She took a bite of brownie first. I laughed.
“What? At my age, I’m not taking any chances.”
I took a bite of mine too. Why not? The desserts at Verbena were decadent, rich, delicious, award winning. But I would rather have had a Hershey’s bar, if I’m honest about the whole thing.
My mother and I always had a deep bond, which is why it had shocked me that she wouldn’t let the girls and me come home when I discovered Carter had left me not penniless, but in a cataclysmic hole of debt. I had tried so hard to move past it, but I think this period in my life now only served to intensify the wound because I knew for certain I would never leave my girls out in the cold when they needed me most.
In the quiet, in the dark, in my most private thoughts, the ones I would never say out loud to anyone, I resented the fact that, though she hadn’t lifted a finger to help me when my life exploded, I would be the one taking my mother to doctors’ appointments, feeding her dinner, bathing her, taking care of her every need until the day she died. But, mostly, I felt lucky I could do it.
We’d never been best friends like some of my girlfriends had been with their mothers, and I was OK with that. I only hoped that, maybe, during this time in our lives, we could repair what was broken between us.
“Darling,” she said, taking a tiny sip of her tea, “I meant what I said the other day. Why do you push that divine man away? He’s totally in love with you. I’m totally in love with you, but even still, I recognize you are not perfect. He, on the other hand, does not.”
