Page 1 of Goode Tidings

CHAPTER 1

Eden

Dolly Parton makes everything better.

Sort of.

Kind of.

Until the song is over, at least.

My left foot taps my car's floorboard in time with the music, the thick tread of my tennis shoe making a dull thump that is out of place with the catchy tune. My right foot is exactly where it has been for the last ninety minutes—the gas pedal. The Sonoran desert whooshes by my car, a blend of reddish-tan and shades of brown. Olive green saguaros dot the hilly landscape like sentries across a loping field. The late-August sun, unrelenting and, at this moment, unwelcome, pierces my tinted car windows.

Where we're headed, the sun won't be so scorching.

"Chuck-wad at it again?" my son asks knowingly from the passenger seat.

Oliver is fourteen, skinny-limbed and gangly, with a smile he doesn't give as readily as he once did, and a handful of pimples hidden under the brown hair flopping over his forehead. There is a spot on the top of his head, right at the crown, where he still smells like his little boy self.

"Charles," I correct, placing emphasis on my boss's actual name, "is doing what Charles does."

Namely, being a terrible boss.

I spare Oliver a quick glance as we climb in elevation, the interstate stretching before us. His hair falls perfectly into his chosen style, best described as broccoli head. Cheeks rounded with baby fat keep him from looking too grown, but it's only a matter of time before the hollow begins and his jawline sharpens.

For the most part, Oliver is as self-absorbed as every other boy his age, but sometimes he surprises me with his perceptiveness. He knows I listen to Dolly when my fingers itch to send a resignation letter.

"I heard you call him Chuck-wad," Oliver responds to my name correction, sullen in an instant.

I press my lips together and swallow down my reply. A minute ago Oliver was happily humming 9 to 5 while my toes tapped, but that effervescence is gone. In its place, sulk only a teenager can call upon effortlessly.

Motherhood isn't for the faint of heart. And single motherhood? Nobody is there to second-guess me, which has its perks, but it also means all those choices fall solely on my shoulders. A friend of mine once said she thought she was going to therapy to discuss the way her dad abandoned her family, but what she ended up talking about were all the ways her mom had failed her. The parent who stayed received more air time. I remember thinking Well, that's unbelievably depressing. Will Oliver slump on a therapist's couch in twenty years, divulging all the ways I failed him?

"Cecily made up that name for Charles," I say, throwing my cousin Dominic's wife under the bus. She's not here to defend herself, and if she were, I know she would take one for the team. Besides, Cecily did give my absolute asshole of a boss that nickname. And then, on the FaceTime call Oliver overheard between my sister-in-law Paisley, Cecily, and me, Paisley proceeded to use the term, so technically, Oliver could have overheard any one of us. It is all of our faults, therefore, it is none of our faults.

Look at me. Validating and vindicating in the same thought.

Oliver pokes a fingertip on my phone screen, cutting off Dolly's warbling about workplace injustice. "Cecily is funny. Even funnier than Aunt Paisley."

Jealousy ricochets across my chest. It's a nonsensical feeling, but it's potent nonetheless. Sometimes I want to remind him it wasn't too many years ago he thought I was so fabulous, he insisted on joining me every time I used the bathroom. It's normal and developmentally appropriate for Oliver to grow apart from me. I get that, and I wouldn't want it any other way. That doesn't stop it from being excruciating.

That's the primary reason I accepted my ex-husband Justin's stupidly generous and possibly foolish offer to let us move into his mountain cabin for the next year. The cabin, left to him when his father passed away, has been sitting empty for a while. Justin is not interested in this cabin, because he is currently en route to Thailand to marry a woman he met online. No, that is not the punch line to a joke.

My initial instinct was to tell Justin to drum up some of his brain cells and reconsider his offer. But then I thought of Oliver, and the way he's growing up at lightning speed. The idea of spending the next year in a cabin in northern Arizona stopped sounding like a half-baked idea from my likely baked ex. What if it was an opportunity to slow life down, to spend quality time with my son before he trades me for girls and friends and life and personal interests and who knows what else?

I'd hung up the phone with Justin, blindsided and dumbfounded by what he'd done: I put the cabin in a trust. When Oliver turns eighteen, ownership will transfer to him. Then he'd suggested we spend time there, too, starting whenever we wanted. What's mine is yours. The comment had been in jest, but I rolled my eyes so hard I might have seen the back of my head.

Justin's parenting happens in small doses. Inconsistent weekend visits, the occasional pep talk, a birthday gift that shows he's not totally unaware of Oliver's interests. The day-to-day, the showing up over and over again? That’s never really been his strength. Still, Oliver loves him in that simple, unwavering way kids have for their parents, and Justin… He baffles me. Everything he wants is at his fingertips, but he won't let himself have it.

However, he will give us a cabin in a mountain town. There will be seasons! Proper seasons, not like in the Sonoran desert where the seasons are summer and not-summer. I'm going to drink apple cider until I float, and wear all the sweaters. So. Many. Sweaters.

Lucky for me, my work is transient. As long as I have an internet connection and electricity to charge my devices, I'm in business. It's pretty much my dream job, aside from having my own brand, but I don't dare to dream that big. I'm a surface pattern designer for a luxury wrapping paper company, the kind of paper that makes a pleasing swoosh sound as good, sharp scissors glide through it like butter. It's soft and thick, almost a shame to cut, and an even greater travesty to tear.

When I'd drifted the idea of moving away for a year by Oliver, in a can you believe this? sort of way, he'd looked excited. Or, as excited as a teenager can look. Though his unbothered mask was firmly in place, he wiggled his toes in his shoes, a sure sign he liked the concept. Oliver's not the kind of kid who has a million friends and can't wait to have the quintessential high school experience. I'd asked him if he would like to go on to high school with all the kids he's known since elementary school, and he'd said something along the lines of I'm ready to meet people who didn't know me when I was pronouncing animal like 'aminal'.

Fair.

"How much longer?" Oliver asks, just as my phone dings with a text notification.