To Perry’s dismay, she did not take her dog but instead glided toward the dining room, where everyone seemed to be gathering. As if on cue, a large glowing cake was carried out, illuminating the faces around the table. Upon seeing Olivia, Perry and Jake’s mother waved her over, pulling her into the family fold.
Jake shook his head. “Isn’t she something?”
Perry didn’t know where to begin. “Is that an accent I heard?”
“Her father is French.”
“So she’s from France?”
“Yeah. She was born there. But she’s lived in New York for most of her life.” He frowned. “She’s American. I think.”
“You think? And her daughter…”
“Luci. Isn’t she cute?”
She was, no doubt. But that wasn’t what Perry was getting at. Before he could say anything else, Jake grabbed both his shoulders. “You can’t tell the others. But I’m going to marry her, Perry.”
“Marry her?” Perry choked.
From the dining room voices rose in a lopsided rendition of “Happy Birthday.”
“Why not? She’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” Jake shouted over the singing. He tossed back the remains of his beer, handed Buster’s leash to Perry, and set off for the dining room with a look of foolish love plastered on his face.
Phoebe
It was her fault that they’d bought the musty fixer-upper. It was probably also her fault they were two months behind schedule and already squeezing the budget. And yet she’d do it all over again. If only she could get her paint samples and get the hell out of the hardware store in time to pick up the boys from preschool.
The woman in front of her in line at the paint design counter would not shut up. Phoebe checked her watch. Five more minutes—that’s all she could afford. She glanced at the color strips in her hand, trying to channel the soothing mood of her blue-and-gray palette. All right, maybe ten more minutes.
“I just love orange. Such a cheerful color. With all the horrors on the news these days, everyone needs a pop of color, don’t you think?”
Phoebe eyeballed the woman in front of her. Tan pants, gray shirt. Even her sensible shoes were of the sand-colored variety. Hypocrite.
The sales associate ignored Phoebe’s pointed gaze and nodded encouragingly at the “greige” woman. “Have you looked at our Aura line? The right shade of orange or red can be positively galvanizing.”
Phoebe would have liked very much to galvanize the womanright out of line. She could not be late again for the twins’ preschool pickup. Sweet, smiling Mrs. McAllister had not been pleased when she showed up late last Friday. Listening to Phoebe’s convoluted excuse for her delay, Mrs. McAllister had distractedly twisted her alphabet necklace until Phoebe feared it would burst. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Riley. But our school policy is that if parents are later than fifteen minutes, we have to place the boys in the extended hours program.”
Upon hearing that, the boys had leaned against Mrs. McAllister’s pillowy side and glared up at their mother. How quickly toddler alliance shifted. And from her own offspring. “I’m sorry.” Phoebe groveled. “It won’t happen again.” The problem was, she knew it would.
Finally, the woman in front of her paid for her orange paint and vacated her place in line. Phoebe surged forward. “I’d like some samples, please.”
The saleswoman smiled as she ticked through Phoebe’s choices. “Sea Salt. Tranquil Moments. Healing Aloe. Classic colors.”
Phoebe beamed. Her favorite was Healing Aloe. It conjured something warm and gooey Phoebe could smear across her face while she sprawled in a hammock.
“I love the names,” her mother, Jane, had said when Phoebe shared her paint chips the evening before at her grandmother Elsie’s birthday party. It was after all the guests had left, and the family lingered in the kitchen, picking at the remains of the hors d’oeuvre trays. Perry had winced. “Tranquil Moments?Sounds like new-age voodoo nonsense, to me.”
“Now,that’sa paint name,” Jake had said.
Perry wasn’t totally off the mark. Phoebe’s life was so chaotic, it was no longer recognizable to her. She knew how ungrateful that sounded. For starters, she had the twins. Two healthy boyswhose legs pumped beneath their sturdy frames as they careened through the suburban square of their Connecticut backyard. A husband, whom she’d not only met and fallen in love with in college, but whom she remained deeply in love with, something her friends routinely commented on. Before starting their family, she’d worked as a copy editor for a local printing business, and Rob still worked for a marketing group. They’d bought their starter home, had kids, and unlike many of the couples they socialized with on the rare occasion when they weren’t too burnt out or busy, they were still stable and solid. But something had been missing, something that left Phoebe feeling edgy and itchy. It wasn’t being a stay-at-home mother, though that was exhausting and, in her opinion, far harder than her day job had been. It wasn’t anything about the boys, who were thriving. Or the husband, whom she adored. It was something else. Something that she needed yet could not name until that fateful fall day she stumbled across it while driving with the boys. It was a house.
In truth, she had not exactly stumbled across it. The lakeside cottage was a thing she’d admired since childhood. Back then, it had been the crisp white of new-fallen snow, its slate roof and cherry-red door bestowing upon it the air of a storybook cottage. Her childhood friend, Jessica, had lived three houses up on the same windy lakeside lane, and Phoebe had spent the better part of her elementary school years passing the house without giving it much thought. Until one summer day when the girls pulled their bikes up alongside the mailbox, which was teeming with soft pink balloons. “They just had a baby,” Jessica said. “Looks like a party.” Indeed, guests were arriving, arms laden with frilly gift boxes and wobbly Jell-O molds. A man in a seersucker suit walked by toting a giant stuffed giraffe. And there, on the front step, stood the young mother with the new baby swaddled against her floral dress.Phoebe had stared at the couple in their lush green yard, welcoming their well-dressed guests amid the haze of pink balloons, and thought to herself,That. That is what my future looks like.
Of course, she had forgotten the house and the party over the years, but not the feeling it had filled her with that summer day. So, on one dark drizzling autumn day when the boys were both sick with head colds and she’d been driving her Jeep Cherokee up and down the hills of Lenox in a desperate attempt to usher them to sleep in their car seats, she’d crested the hill and seen theFor Salesign, she’d slammed on the brakes. Both boys jerked awake, wailing in sleep-deprived protest. “It’s okay,” Phoebe had cooed as she stared back at the house from her childhood memory. Because, suddenly, it was.
The cottage was no longer crisp or tidy. It had the sad appearance of having not been lived in for some time, its lawn overgrown and its paint weathered. But still—there was the stone chimney. And the faded red door. And the sweeping view of the water. The memory of the beaming new mother clutching her bright new baby rushed back to Phoebe as she stared through the swish of her windshield wipers at the house.All it needs is a family, she thought.Like us.
She’d raced straight home and called the Realtor. While Rob and the boys were traversing the soccer field at practice the next morning, unbeknownst to him, Phoebe was exploring every inch of the creaky old cottage. By the time he came home, she was waiting for him in the kitchen, with a shy smile and a copy of the listing in hand.
