“Seeing Pete, after all that time,” Brooke said. “I can’t even describe how I felt. It was terrifying. I was already having these nagging midnight doubts about me and Harris. If we were really right for each other. And then to run into Pete—two weeks before my wedding! It was like seeing a ghost, Mom. I hadn’t thought about this guy in years. At the end of that summer, I came home and moved in with Harris and started law school. Mentally, I put Pete Haynes in a shoe box, taped it up, and shoved it in the back of my closet. But that day, at freaking Johnny Harris Barbecue, the tape came off. And I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop thinking about Pete.”
“I wish you’d told me,” Marie said quietly.
“I couldn’t tell you, because I couldn’t admit it to myself. I was having anxiety nightmares. Panic attacks. I got some Xanax from a girlfriend at work, but the Xanax just made me feel stoned. It didn’t get Pete out of my head.”
“So when you ran away, the night of your bachelorette party?” Marie asked.
“I got in the car and started driving. That day at Johnny Harris, Pete told me he was staying on Cumberland, working on some project for the National Park Service. I didn’t have a plan. Not really. I told myself I was going to Loblolly just to hang out and give myself time to think. But that was a lie. I wasn’t running away from Harris. I was running to Pete.”
Brooke found her half-empty glass of wine and drained it.
“Of course, when I threw myself at him on Cumberland, he turned me down flat. Told me he didn’t want to be my rebound boy.”
At some point, Brooke got her phone and showed Marie the last photo she’d taken of Pete before he’d left for Alaska. It had been taken while they were kayaking on the river. He was bearded and bare-chested, laughing, the late-day sun making a halo around his shaggy, unkempt hair.
Marie peered down at the phone, enlarged the image, then tapped the photo with her index finger. “The freckles. That’s where they came from. I’ve always wondered.”
“It’s uncanny,” Brooke said. “Henry has the exact same number of freckles sprinkled over his nose and cheeks as his father. I know, because I counted them. While Pete was asleep. The morning after…” She blushed. “The morning after Henry was conceived.”
Marie didn’t seem shocked. “When did things change between you? I mean, you just told me he rejected you when you showed up on Cumberland Island after you called off the wedding.”
“We mutually agreed that we should take things slowly. The old ‘let’s just be friends’ kind of deal. I realized I wasn’t in any kind of shape to start a new relationship, I was trying to get my law practice up and running, and Pete’s a naturally cautious person. We were seeing each other casually, at least at first.”
“And then?”
Brooke twisted a strand of hair around her finger, avoiding her mother’s probing eyes.
“Pete had applied for this research grant to study elk migration patterns in the tundra. It meant living in this remote base camp in Alaska. That’s where he is, by the way. Alaska. It’s a three-year project. Out of nowhere, he told me he loved me and wanted to be with me. I guess that’s when it hit me that things had changed between us. We’d gotten serious when neither of us expected to. So… one thing led to another. Spontaneous combustion, you might say. And by spontaneous, I mean, I wasn’t on birth control.”
“Oh, Brooke.” Marie sighed.
“The next morning, Pete asked me to go with him.”
“And you said?”
Brooke shrugged. “I wasn’t very diplomatic. I mean, what was I going to do in the middle of the Alaskan tundra? Sue a moose? I drove him to the airport, and we talked about my flying out to see him at Christmas. Six weeks later, I figured out I was pregnant.”
“And you never told him? Never let him know he was going to be a father?”
“I wanted to. We were Skyping every other day, and he was so excited about being in Alaska. Everything was new and fascinating, and his work was really intense. He’d be out in the field, four or five days at a time, camping and tracking these radio-collared elk. I thought, if I tell Pete I’m pregnant, he’ll think he has to come back here to take care of me and the baby. It would mean giving up his grant.”
“Shouldn’t that have been his choice to make?”
“Maybe. But I was having doubts of my own. I loved Pete, but I didn’t want to be trapped into having a relationship just because of a baby. What if he did come back? And it turned out we weren’t actually good together?”
“That’s just a risk you have to take in a relationship,” Marie said. “In life. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” Brooke said, suppressing a yawn. “Henry and I, we’re doing okay. It’s not easy. In fact, most of the time, being a single mom is terrifying. But I don’t regret it.” She met her mother’s steady gaze. “What about you, Mom? Any regrets?”
Marie stood slowly, then pulled Brooke to a standing position. “No. I don’t regret giving up my career to have time to raise my brilliant, gorgeous daughter. I don’t even regret marrying your dad. We had lots of good years, you know. I’d never give Patricia the power to take that away from me. The way I see it now, I got the better part of the deal. The man I married was young and fun, the adventurous and romantic Gordon. Look at him now. Yes, now he has more time and lots more money to spare, but Patricia’s got the cranky, high blood pressure, potbellied Gordon. I saw them across the room at a wedding at the Oglethorpe Club a couple of weeks ago, and he looked miserable. Patricia couldn’t even get him to go out on the dance floor.”
“The two of you used to dance all the time, especially at weddings and Christmas parties,” Brooke said. “When I was a teenager I thought it was sooooo gross. Parents dancing together!” She covered her eyes in mock horror.
Marie went into Henry’s nursery, fetched a stack of bed linens, and proceeded to make up a bed on the sofa.
“See you in the morning,” Brooke said, yawning and giving her mother a peck on the cheek. “I almost forgot. Were you planning on staying over Sunday night?”
“Yes. Why?”
