Juliet had been worried about this. “I don’t know, honey. Singapore is really far.”
“But it’s exciting. I need to have an exciting life,” Danica shot back. “That’s what writers do. They travel. They see new cultures. They meet new people.”
“It’s complicated when you’re fourteen years old,” Juliet said. “Your school is here. And what about Mary?”
“Mary would jump at the chance to move to Singapore,” Danica said. “Honestly, it would be great. There isn’t room for me at your apartment in Greenwich, anyway.”
Juliet was starting to feel small, like a bug that Danica could crush with her shoe. “You aren’t going to Singapore, Danica. I’m sorry.”
Danica flared her nostrils. Their food was now the last thing on their minds. “But doesn’t this mean we can move back to the Upper West Side apartment?”
Juliet wanted to laugh at that. What a beautiful thing that might have been, if only Alvin cared at all about the mother and child he was leaving behind. “We’re staying in Greenwich. I like it there! It’s less stuffy. Filled with artists and writers and…”
Perhaps because she was fully comprehending this, Danica burst into tears and got to her feet. “This is not happening! This is not happening!” And then, she ran for the exit and shot down the stairs.
Exasperated, Juliet followed her, waving toward Shonda to tell her that there was an emergency, but she’d be back to take care of the bill. Shonda looked worried. Just before Juliet ducked down the stairs after her daughter, she heard Shonda calling out, asking if there was anything she could do.
“Nothing! There’s nothing!” Juliet cried back, although by then, she was already in the stairwell, chasing her daughter. Tears fell from her eyes and streaked her cheeks. She thought she could hear Danica a few floors below, gasping for air. But when Juliet reached the sidewalk outside the building, she turned left, then right, and had no concept of which direction Danica had gone.
Panic made her legs shake. She wanted to ask the people on the streets, to demand where her daughter had gone. But there was an anonymity in a city like this, a feeling that everyone was only out for themselves and what they could get. Danica was gone. Maybe she was headed to her father’s apartment? Oh, but that would really enrage Alvin, and Juliet didn’t want Danica to see that.
Fully sobbing, now, Juliet took off toward the Upper West Side. It wasn’t so far to the apartment, and Danica wasn’t the sportiest of people. Maybe Juliet could catch her. But as she raced through the city, searching, Juliet found her mind tracing back to that awful, dark night so many years ago, the night when her and Theo’s lives had taken the darkest possible timeline.
Every year of Juliet’s life since that spring, Juliet had thanked her lucky stars to be alive. She’d reminded herself that life was not a given, that it could be taken away at any moment.
But being a mother exacerbated those feelings. Now, Juliet was horribly, painfully aware that her daughter could be taken from her at any time. Fear was the only constant, when it came to the enormous amount of love she had for Danica.
After nearly an hour of searching and calling and growing irate and frustrated, Juliet came to a halt near Central Park, gasping for breath. For reasons that she couldn’t fully explain, for reasons that it would probably take a therapist years to unpack, she dialed Ivy’s number. When Ivy answered, there was a tentativeness to her tone. “Juliet?” She sounded like she hadn’t expected to hear from Juliet ever again.
“Ivy,” Juliet cried. “Ivy, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
“Juliet? What’s happening?” But when Juliet couldn’t answer, Ivy went on, “You need to take some breaths. Calm down. Let me know what’s happening.”
Juliet flailed forward and crashed against the side of a tree, before sitting in front of it, wrapped in a tight ball. “He’s leaving her,” Juliet whispered. “He left me a long time ago, but I didn’t think he’d leave her.”
“I don’t understand,” Ivy said. “Who left whom?”
But there was too much to explain, too many secrets in Juliet’s heart. Rather than explain anything else, she brought her phone from her ear and made to hang up. But just then, she spotted her: a girl of fourteen, sprawled out in front of a tree in Central Park not far from Juliet, weeping into her hands. It was Danica. she was all right. For now.
7
It was the end of May. Sunlight drenched the back porch of The Dockside, a gorgeous space that overlooked the docks and the yonder Atlantic, a space that should have been full on a gorgeous Sunday like this.
It begged the questions: what was wrong with Theo? What was wrong with his vision?
Theo sat at his favorite table, again going over the various spreadsheets and notes he’d put together, documents that he’d hoped would help him find his way to breaking even again. But the fact was, the city council members were right. His restaurant was a dud, and he had no idea how to survive. Just last night, honesty finding its way into his conversation with his sister, she’d asked him, “Why don’t you close up? Do something else? You could be a chef at some other restaurant. You could stop trying so hard to stay afloat.”
Now, there was a knock on a nearby table. Theo raised his head to find his chef and part-time manager, Ben, hovering, wiping his hands on a towel. For the past six years, Ben had worked here at The Dockside. He’d fast become Theo’s best and maybe only real friend.
“Hey, Bossman,” Ben said, using the silly nickname that Theo sort of hated. “You said you have a big reservation tonight, right?”
“That’s right. Ten people,” Theo confirmed.
“Congrats!”
Theo didn’t want to tell Ben about his connection to the reservation, how Celia Harper had probably made it because she felt bad about the past, about Juliet, about everything that had happened. But something about Ben’s gaze told Theo that he didn’t want to talk about the reservation for long. He had something else on his mind.
Cold stones dropped into Theo’s stomach. “Want to sit down?”
