“I, uh... I don’t think that’s true,” I said. “You’re so kind to us. All summer, you’ve made us feel right at home. And Pinot, he—”
“I thought,” she said, “a baby would fix me. Fix my mistakes. But it only made everything a thousand times worse.”
There was a decent amount of information about Meredith’s daughter online, but almost all of it centered around her horse shows in Europe. Juliet, now twenty-four, had been one of those cool celebrity babies, raised far from paparazzi-ridden cities and by parents who’d been very rich for a very long time and thus required no external validation from the media. There were a few pictures of her out and about in London with fancy friends she’d met at her posh university, but that was about it. She was, for the most part, a private citizen.
“What do you mean?” The words practically fell out of my mouth. I was in a trance, almost—and so was she. “What happened?”
Meredith, at that, walked toward the open window. She did not turn when she spoke. “Being a mother did not come naturally to me. I never bonded with my daughter the way I should have. The life I chose, the life I’d wanted for myself, it was not... I did not...”
I held my breath at her pause. She was keeping a slice of thestory to herself, and I knew it because I did the exact same thing all the time. A few seconds later, she continued, but she never circled back to that—to the life she did not live. Some chapters, you just kept closed.
“You must understand, Katie. We do not stay young forever. And when I became pregnant with Juliet... I thought it was time for me to grow up. I thought it would be the noble thing to do. To be present, to be doting. After all, how hard could it be? I understood people better than anyone. Surely, I could figure out what it would take to be a good mother and behave that way.
“But no. I could not fake it. I did not want to nurse her, and I did not want to play with her, and I did not want to read to her, and I did not want to do any of the things I knew a mother was supposed to want to do for her child. What I wanted was to relive my twenties. What I wanted was a way to turn back time. And in absence of that, I did the only thing I knew how to do when the pain became unbearable. I wrote. I sent Alan and Juliet away, and I stayed in this house, and I wrote.”
I hated the way her voice sounded. How crisp and clear it was. How deeply she understood her own wounds and how fully she embodied her own trope. How much texture—how much suffering—she could stuff into a single sentence. And yet, I could not look away. Could not stop trying to understand how a mother could change her mind about her daughter or how Meredith Bradford became whatever she was today.
“Did you ever get help? Did they ever come back—your husband, your daughter? Why’d you quit writing? Did the pain ever stop?”
Meredith was quiet for a minute. She was still facing the openwindow—facing the sea. A breeze swept in, rustling my magazines and sending a shiver down my spine.
“I just kept trying,” she said, “to turn back time.”
An hour later, once Meredith had disappeared to the carriage house and I’d set my collage on a drafting table in the pottery studio to dry, I tiptoed onto the front porch, sat down on the bottom stair, and wrapped my hands around my knees, waiting for the familiar crunch of gravel, for the certain sound of Tyler making his way home.
His shoulders straightened at first sight of me. “Hey, you. What’s going on? You all right?”
“Nothing, yeah. I’m fine, I just...” I sighed, and he pulled me into his arms. “Would you maybe make a peach cobbler with me? I checked, and we’ve got everything we need. Even ice cream.”
His mouth quirked. “Do you mean, willImake a peach cobbleron behalfof you and me?”
I nodded, laughing. He drew me closer, and my strange encounter with Meredith melted away. “Yes,” I said. “Exactly that, please.”
Another smirk. And then, the tug of my hand. “Come on, Nutmeg. Grab my apron from the laundry room. Let’s get you fed.”
I laughed again, and then, tucked under his arm, the two of us made our way inside. I hopped up onto my little spot on the island, and Tyler preheated the oven, and I told him about the book I was listening to, and he told me about the teenage newcomer he’d met that night, and he diced six tablespoons of cold butter with a pastry cutter, and I ate half the peaches he’d peeled and sliced while he’d disappeared into the pantry to search for a new roll of parchmentpaper. When he returned, eyes narrowed, he stepped between my knees.
“Why am I missing a pound of peak season stone fruit, Katherine?”
“Pinot was hungry! It wasn’t me! It wasn’t—”
He shoved a dish towel in my mouth. I faked a gag, then spat it out and bonked him in the biceps with whatever spatula-thing was closest to me. He snatched it away and then kissed me hard.
When he finally pulled back, smiling wide, I took a picture in my mind.
“What are you thinking?” he said, looping his arms around my waist.
“That summer is magic. That this place is magic. That this, here, is perfect to me.”
51
Tyler
The next nine days flew by. They were impossibly easy. We biked into town. We wrote on the terrace. We cooked dinner while we bumped hips and talked shit about people in our books who did not actually exist. We spent hours reading on the floor of Meredith’s upstairs library, Katie curled into my chest as I mindlessly threaded my fingers through her hair. On evenings I went out for a meeting, I’d come home around ten to find Katie reading in the library, crafting at the breakfast table, or cycling on an old-school spin bike in the fitness room. Reunited, we’d talk for an hour while I’d make us tea or a snack, or once even, two very sleek deconstructed strawberry shortcakes. And then, around eleven, before Katie and I went back to our separate beds, I’d pull her face into mine and kiss her good night.
“I’m crazy about you,” I’d say, palms still glued to her cheeks. “Just so you know.”
“Yeah?” she’d say, barely pulling back. “Go finish your book, then. Go be inspired. Go make something great.”
