“Hi Melissa,” she says brightly, before turning to the kids. “Hey guys. I’m making pizza for dinner. Wanna help?”
“Pizza!” Liam’s face lights up and he sprints toward the kitchen, and Claire follows almost as enthusiastically.
Well. I’d wondered if the kids would have a hard time saying goodbye to me, but apparently there’s no issue there.
“Thanks, babe,” Troy calls to Olivia, as she heads off to cook with my kids. “Claire can eat pizza now, right?”
“Yeah, no restrictions.” I hand him the bags I packed for the kids.
He nods. “You said the surgeon was happy with everything? When you took her for follow-up?”
“Yeah, he thinks she’s fully healed. But of course if she starts to feel sick, she should be checked out. Her surgeon said we could call him?—”
“If she feels sick, I’ll take her to the hospital here,” Troy interrupts.
“Okay.” I pause. “But you’ll call me, right? If there are any problems?”
“Yes, Melissa,” he says, in a tone of voice I know well. He thinks I’m an overly anxious mother. “I’ll call you if there are problems. Anything else I should know?”
So many things. Don’t forget that Claire still likes a story beforebed, and that Liam hates spicy food. And please don’t let them spend all weekend watching TV, or it’ll be impossible for me to limit their screen time back in Somerset.
“I don’t think so.” I can hear the kids chattering happily in the kitchen, and I resist the temptation to go inside and give them each a last hug and kiss. It’s only a two day separation, after all.
As I walk back to my car, I hear someone call my name. I turn and see my former next-door neighbor, Julie Schroeder, hurrying down her front steps. Julie’s a stay-at-home mom whose kids are close in age to mine, and before I moved away, we had a quasi-friendship.
I say quasi-friendship because spending time with Julie was never comfortable. She was the mother who had everything together, and I was the mom who nearly gave her a heart attack by offering her kids grocery store popsicles on a hot summer afternoon. After Julie recovered from the scare of refined sugar and artificial colors, she rushed back to her own house for some homemade organic fruit juice pops. You get the idea.
“Melissa!” she says effusively. “I thought it was you.” She pulls me into a hug, and I’m hit with a wave of floral perfume. “You’re looking really well.”
“Thanks, Julie,” I say politely. “You too.” Her highlights are flawless, her figure is trim, and she has the dewy skin of a woman who gets eight hours of sleep every night.
“You brought your kids for the weekend?”
“Yup.”
“I’ll have to text Troy, see if they want to have a playdate with mine.”
“Sounds good.” I move to step around her to get back to my car. “It was great seeing you, Julie, but I should hit the road?—”
“You don’t want to come in for coffee orsomething?” she asks. “We’ve all been worried about you, after everything that happened . . .” She trails off, as though she doesn’t want to sully her mouth by speaking the words.
“The divorce,” I say bluntly. “Yeah, it was tough, but I’ve moved on.”
Julie arches a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Already? That’s great, Melissa. Anyone I know?”
A blush creeps up my cheeks. I meant I’d moved on to life as an independent woman and mother, but Julie thought I’d moved on to another relationship.
“Oh, I’m not dating anyone,” I say quickly. “I just meant I’d moved on from Troy.”
“Oh, right,” she says, giving me a sympathetic nod. “But I’m sure it won’t take you long to find someone. You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?”
“I haven’t noticed.” It’s a lie; I’ve definitely noticed that I’ve lost two pounds in the past week. I’ve tried hard to eat healthy and done the barre workout every day (I can now make it to sixteen minutes), so two pounds doesn’t seem like nearly enough.
Julie lowers her voice a little. “You know, Candice McLean found a doctor who’ll prescribe Ozempic, even if you don’t technically meet the BMI criteria. She’s lost, like, fifteen pounds in a month.”
“I wouldn’t have thought she’d need it.” Candice lives down the street, and she’s always been a little curvy, but nowhere near obese.
Julie shrugs. “She was worried Brad’s eyes were wandering.”
