Wendell could see the pain in his father’s face as he tried to placate his wife. “It’s all right, darling. The development will probably never get passed, even if it does come down to a vote. Now, let yourself get some rest.”
Wendell watched as she collapsed against her pillows. His father stayed beside her, pressing a cold washcloth to her forehead as she fretted. When she finally settled, his father came out to the hall looking weary. He always looked weary these days after being with her.
“I have to go to that meeting tonight at town hall,” he told Wendell. “Look after your mother.”
Wendell could not believe his father was leaving for a meeting. Their mother was fading before their eyes, especially in recent days, and he feared being alone with her almost as much as he feared the ticking of the clock.
“Are you going to stop the development?” he asked.
“It’s not up to me, son. I’ll do my best. But it’s a board vote, and I’m just one.”
“But what about Mom’s turtles?” Wendell’s childhood memories with his mother ran strong through those meadows. He might not otherwise have felt as passionate about them as she did, but given her poor health, preserving them was about far more than preserving the turtles.
His father loosened his tie. There were deep bags under his eyes. “There are some things your mother doesn’t understand.”
Wendell was too respectful to voice his disagreement, but his father was dead wrong. Despite the hundred ways her body was failing her, there was nothing wrong with his mother’s mind.
Later that night, when his father came home, Wendell passed their room on his way to bed. On the other side of the door, he heard his mother’s whispery voice. She’d insisted on staying awake until his father returned. “Jane McNeill called. She said there was a vote tonight.”
Jane McNeill was a friend of his mother’s and a town busybody. But he could tell by the look on his father’s face when he came home that Jane was right. Wendell paused, waiting for his father to say the right thing. Through the crack in the door, he watched him sink onto the edge of the bed. “Jane McNeill doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he said softly. “Don’t you worry, I’m taking care of it.”
His mother looked up at his father, a mere bird beneath theblankets, and Wendell waited for her to say more. But her eyelids fluttered. Wendell watched his father take her hand and press it to his lips. The look on his face made Wendell swallow hard. “Get some rest, my love.”
There had been a vote. Later, Wendell would learn that money was exchanged and the aforementioned DEP file was buried, along with the plight of the spotted turtles. But if his father could not protect the turtles, he did everything he could to protect his wife. Wendell was never sure how he managed it, but he held the contractors off and out of the town meadows all through that spring, as his mother grew sicker and sicker. Permits were stalled. Paperwork was misplaced. And all the while Charlotte Combs faded.
She’d been laid to rest in the cemetery for just a week when the first dozer clambered up the grassy flank of the meadow and broke ground. Somehow his father had kept them at bay just long enough. Wendell supposed that was love.
FiveGinny
Could a thirty-five-year-old woman ever really go home? Ginny turned the radio down as she crested the final hill to Saybrook and slowed to take in the view.
Ahead, the sun hovered over the horizon, casting everything beneath it in a bath of gold. Ginny couldn’t help it: the idyllic view took her breath away now just as it had years ago, and she steered her VW Beetle to the side of the road so she could take it all in. Flanked by rolling green hills on either side, Candlewood Lake shimmered like a silver ribbon in the distance. The small village of Saybrook stretched along its shoreline. “It’s nice that some things don’t change,” she whispered to herself, sliding her sunglasses up on her head.
She could trace her entire childhood at the base of this hill. White church steeples and red barns jutted out of the greenery. There was Main Street, dotted by familiar shops: the Hickory Stick bookstore, Haven’s Bakery, and Sacred Grounds coffee. Among the quaint village shops was her parents’ real estate business, Feldman Agency. Though she couldn’t see it from the hilltop, outside the village center were the library and Saybrook Elementary, where she’d gone to school. Beyond, tucked among the New England greenery, looped a tangle of rural country roads that she knew likethe back of her hand: leading to the homes of childhood friends, the town beach, the winery at the northern point on the lake. All of it glittered in the late-day sun like a promise, and Ginny tried to reassure herself that it was a sign. A grown woman could go home. Even if she didn’t really want to be there, there was nothing like summer in Connecticut’s lake region.
Reluctantly, she put the car in drive and pulled back onto the main road. Time to face facts. The rental cottage she’d arranged for the summer was only five miles from her parents’ place and right on the water. She loved her parents, but there was no need to press her already questionable luck and cram in together under the same roof.
“I don’t understand,” her mother had complained. “You have a perfectly good bedroom waiting for you. I even left all your high school posters on the wall!” Which was precisely why Ginny wouldnotbe staying with them. Aside from the far more important fact that her father was still recovering from heart surgery. A small detail her mother had sprung on her mere weeks ago, a week after the heart attack and days after the subsequent surgery. “He’s fine, really. It was a bit of a scare, but we didn’t want to worry you. Nothing a double bypass couldn’t fix.”
Ginny had been shocked. Not just by her mother’s casual and late sharing of such dire news but by the realization that they hadn’t wanted tobother herwith it. “What?” her mother had asked in an exasperated phone voice when Ginny questioned why on earth they hadn’t told her right away. “We knew you were already coming home. Why add to your stress?” It had left Ginny speechless.
It didn’t matter that the doctor said he was in otherwise good shape, that he could expect a full life ahead of him with some dietary tweaks and a little exercise. If her parents had truly believed the news of his heart attack was best kept a secret for her own well-being, what didthatsay about the state of her life?
True, Ginny was in a bit of a transition, as her therapist had defined it. She had left her fiancé, her job, and her apartment in Chicago and driven halfway across the country to return home. But she was not a train wreck. The past year had been the real train wreck, when her fiancé of five years finally admitted that he was not just pushing off the wedding yet again—he actually did not want to get married at all. He was happy, however, to stay together and continue to live together as they had been the last four years. “It’s just a piece of paper, Ginny. It doesn’t mean anything.” But the problem was, it did. To her. For five years she’d waited for Thomas to set a date. After all, he’d been the one who had proposed! At first he’d wanted to save up more money. Then, when they found a great deal on the Lincoln Park place, they couldn’t afford to turn it down. So the wedding was delayed another year. “I want you to have the kind of wedding you’ve always dreamed of,” he’d insisted. Which was kind of funny, really, because unlike plenty of brides, Ginny had never been caught up in the idea of a dream wedding. All she’d dreamed of was marrying Thomas. And so it went, year after year, while they attended the weddings of all their friends, and Ginny began dreading the repeated question, “When is it going to be your turn?” The wedding showers gave way to baby showers, and by then Thomas questioned if it even made sense to host a wedding. “Then let’s elope!” Ginny had said. But after further consideration, Thomas would say something like “We’d miss having our friends there” or “My mother would never forgive me,” to which Ginny thought,What about me?
That spring, when they’d returned home to their one-bedroom apartment from a friend’s housewarming party celebrating new digs out in the suburbs and new twin babies, Ginny had tossed her purse on the couch and confronted Thomas. “We’re never getting married, are we?” He’d looked perplexed, then offended. But when pressed, Thomas could give no real reason. They’d sat onthe couch, shoulder to shoulder, staring out the window of their perfect one-bedroom, and split a bottle of wine. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” he’d said when she suggested moving out. “Then give me a date, Thomas,” she’d countered. “Any date. Anywhere, you choose. Just give me a date in the next six months.” When he couldn’t, Ginny told him it was over.
After that, they’d listed the apartment. It took only a week to find a young couple happy to pay the full ask, while Thomas slept on the couch and Ginny stayed late at work, since, as it turned out, it really was the perfect apartment for a newlywed couple. Just not for them.
Ginny took advantage of her real estate connections and had just begun scouting rentals, in a rush to find a new place, when her boss called her into her office. “I’m sorry, but we’re downsizing.”
“I thought we were merging?” Ginny sputtered. She’d been working in commercial real estate in the city, for Cooper and Hayman, the second largest firm in Chicago.
“We are, but I’m afraid there isn’t room to keep everyone. The new partners aren’t willing to let me bring more than two agents with me.” At least she’d looked pained as she broke the news. “You are one of my best. I’m sorry, Ginny.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse. But as she cleaned out her desk, Ginny picked up a small framed picture of her parents sitting on their family boat back home in Saybrook. Looking at it in that moment, it had occurred to Ginny that Thomas had not been her only problem. As much as she’d initially loved Chicago, her heart wasn’t in the city anymore. She’d outgrown the bar scene and the nightlife. Her friends had all moved out to the plush suburbs of Highland Park and Hinsdale. She had no real connections in the city, outside of colleagues. And now she had no job.
The following week, as she and Thomas packed their belongings and divided up furniture, Ginny’s mother had called withthe news. “I don’t want you to worry,” she’d insisted. “There’s nothing you can do here, and besides, you have enough going on in your life.”
