It happens slowly, but it doesn’t feel that way, not at all. One day she is flying down the stairs, right into Marcella’s arms, and the next she is stealing the car keys, the Scotch, rolling her eyes at everything her mother wears and says and does. One day she is sneaking out into the water before Marcella is even conscious.
“Oh, you did the same thing,” Sylvia says. “Give her some space.”
But Marcella never rebelled, she never wanted to move away from Sylvia—in fact, she was always desperate for her. It was Sylvia who didn’t need Marcella. And now, neither does Lauren.
Sometimes Marcella blames Sylvia for turning her daughter against her, although she knows this is not fair. If anyone is responsible for Lauren’s spirit, it is Dave.
Everything that proves her daughter’s independence takes heroutside the house, and everything that proves Marcella’s keeps her inside it, because what does she have if not this family? If not this marriage?
Dave has always been her solace—she knew when she met him that they would be married, and she knew after they were married that it would last. He is a kind man, yes, but more than that, he takes her side.Happy wife, happy life, the old adage goes. She has found it has the benefit of being true.
“Whatever you think, sweetheart,” he says often, and she knows he’s not trying to appease her. That just like she married him for his foundation, he married her for her conviction. He trusts her judgment.
He trusts her judgment with his supplements—the vitamin D, the zinc, the B12 shots he gets monthly, on her orders. He trusts it with her design sense, the way she decorates their home: the new pillows she buys for their bed, the lamps for the living room. He trusts her with vacations, the small trips she books—Catalina for the weekend, Cabo for spring break. The only area he has ever pushed back on is Lauren—specifically, the risks he’s willing for her to take physically.
Dave pushes her into waves; he hikes with her on mountains; he convinces Marcella they should buy her a surfboard for her seventh birthday.
“She’s too young,” Marcella says.
“She’s ready,” Dave tells her.
He’s adamant about this. He wants Lauren to experience the thrill of life. And Marcella trusts him, doesn’t she? She tries to trust him. As Lauren grows and the two of them experience a water language all their own, Marcella has no choice but to.
It isn’t until the accident that things start to change. That she sees a hint of her worry burrow down into Lauren—and remain. At first she is breathless with guilt, but over time that changes into something else. Because now, at last, Lauren has something in common with her mother.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Stone arrives at 7:00 p.m. on the dot, carrying a bottle of Sancerre and a bushel of sunflowers, cut from Bonnie’s deck. He’s dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian-print shirt that looks faded and thrifted but is probably closer to brand-new and three hundred dollars.
“Hey,” he says when I answer the door. His hand is suspended, fist closed. “I’m actually not sure I’ve ever knocked before.”
I’m wearing a blue-and-gray-striped knit sweater over a white sundress that I realized too late looks like a nightgown. It’s warm out, but the ocean breeze is starting to cool everything down.
“Come in,” I say. “I don’t think the house looks that much different.”
It’s true—neither Marcella nor Sylvia has done much redecorating in the past decade.
Stone steps inside gingerly, like he’s entering a dimension where the floor is just a little bit breakable. “Place looks great,” he says.
“Stone, honey.” Marcella comes into the entryway and gives him a hug. He hands her over the wine.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” my mother says to him, then to me: “Your dad’s out back. Go ahead and I’ll open this.”
She taps the wine with her index finger.
Stone follows me through the kitchen. Sylvia is making fish in parchment. Something white—maybe cod or branzino—with grape tomatoes, olive oil, lemon slices, and olives.
Stone comes up behind her and grabs her gently around the waist. She smiles into him.
“Hello there,” Sylvia says. “Still single?”
“Why, you know anyone?”
Sylvia looks him up and down. “Me.”
Stone laughs. His laugh was always loud, open, unapologetic. He laughs like someone who has never worked in an office before. “You’re too good for me, and you know it.”
Sylvia pins the parchment with a toothpick. “I’d settle.”
