“Should I call back?”
“What? No! This is a good time, Froggie. I’m just driving. Not doing anything.”
Edie rolled her eyes. “So, you may have noticed that I’m not there.”
“That’s good, because I don’t have time to get you from the airport. I picked up another shift. I’m trying to double up so I can buy a Jet Ski for the lake before my vacation in June. But whenareyou coming? The jet lag’s not going to be your friend for your first week.”
“When I’m coming is kind of why I’m calling. I mean, not to decide when. To talk about why I’m not there yet? And the job. I should talk about that, too, but I’m not sure what to say.It’s not that I don’t appreciate how many strings you pulled for me, and those culinary science jobs with the nice benefits are hard to get, I know. Really, it should be a dream. Maybe I should call HR and talk to them? I can get the start date moved, or—who was the woman you’re talking to?”
“Frog,” her mom cut in. Edie realized she didn’t hear the road anymore. “I’ve pulled into the Pamperin Park lot. Remember when I’d take you and your brothers here? And the time Ethan fell into Duck Creek and you went after him and grabbed him by the diaper and hauled him right up?”
“I remember,” Edie said. She would not cry. She was not calling her mom from camp, homesick. She hadn’t actually been sent to camp unless you counted the Parks and Rec city program that was drop-in childcare, which she did not. “I don’t know what to do.”
It was the only thing left to say.
It was the first time, maybe—the first time she could remember—that she’d ever said it to her mom.
“What about?” her mom asked softly. “About the inn, or about this girl?”
“About the—what?” Edie held the phone out and looked at it, then brought it back to her ear. “How do you know about the innorthe girl?”
“Morag called me days ago.” She heard her mom’s truck door open and the familiar sound of her zipping open the compartment in her purse where she kept her cigarettes, then the flick of her lighter and a short inhale. “She reminds me of your great aunt, my mom’s sister. I wish you could have met her. I mean, obviously Morag is the British version. Auntie Sheila was born in Manitowoc. Remember when we went to the maritime museum there? I think you were fourteen or so. The boys were a handful.”
Edie remembered. “Moragcalledyou? On the phone? And the two of you talked about me?”
“We FaceTimed, actually. Why wouldn’t we talk about you? What else do we have in common?”
“Why?” Edie closed her eyes.
“I assume because she’s worried. I did have her send over the papers with the terms for the inn, and I gave them to your cousin Amber to look over the legal stuff.”
“Amber’s a paralegal. If I got that far, I was going to talk to Meadow. She went to law school.”
“Paralegals are the same thing as lawyers. Amber went to school for two years to get qualified. Law school takes three. What could be in that last year, how to talk to the Supreme Court? I don’t need that. I just wanted to know you weren’t being scammed by an old English woman. Anyway, Amber said she didn’t know a lot about property transfer in the UK, but nothing looked fishy to her. So there you go.”
“I’m relieved that my cousin Amber, paralegal, didn’t find anything fishy in paperwork she admits she knows nothing about.”
“You’re welcome.” Her mom took another inhale of her cigarette. “But I’m picking up that it’s not the nuts and bolts that have got you hung up.”
“No.” Edie could see, in her mind’s eye, exactly where her mom’s truck would be parked, and her mom next to it on the bench in the patch of white cedars by the picnic shelter. Pamperin Park was as familiar to her as the freckles on the back of her hand. Her mom liked to park her truck in the last space in any lot if she could, so at least one side wouldn’t have a car next to it. It was the beginning of March, still cold in Green Bay, with snow on the ground covering the pine needles, and her mom was on the way to second shift. It was probably gettingdark. There wouldn’t be anybody at the park but maybe a few dog walkers.
Sheknewthat place.
“You ever think there was a reason I told you to go to England?” her mom asked.
“Because that’s where Greg’s from.” Edie meant her dad, Greg Whitelock.
“Sure. Good enough. But that’s not all of it. The truth is, Frog, you don’t belong here.”
Edie sucked in a breath, hurt.
“It’s not that I don’twantyou to go to work with me every day. I’ve had to hold myself back from buying us matching lunch sets at Target and fantasizing about doing meal prep with you—I mean, add meat to mine, but you can really cook! It’s the dream, working alongside your kids, knowing they’re going to be all right, watching them get what you had to work so hard for. Especially if it was you. You’re my daughter. You and I both know your brothers are knuckleheads. I can hold a conversation with you.” Her mother sighed. “But the truth is, I’ve hated the light that’s gone out in your face since you lost Fauxmage. That place was cool as shit, Frog. I couldn’t believe you’d done that, all by yourself. But it wasn’t a Green Bay kind of thing.”
Edie’s heart skipped hearing her mom praise her.That place was cool as shit.For Tanya, it was the equivalent of throwing a party at a thirty-dollar-a-plate supper club. “How can someone from Green Bay not be able to make a Green Bay kind of thing?” she asked.
“Why didn’t I stay with your dad when I met him in London while following the greatest jam band in the whole world, Phish?”
“I don’t know.” Edie was a little surprised to realize she didn’t. There was a way that she’d always thought of the story of hermom and dad as fated not to work out. Her mom had been so far from home, and the fling with Greg Whitelock must have been a passing thing, Edie’s resulting birth the kind of music festival event that happened to Tanya Hoberg back then. Not a plan. Not a future she’d truly considered.
