Just Add Happiness

Chapter One

I checked my phone one last time as the first guests arrived for book club. My best friend, Alicia, had volunteered to handle the greetings, so I could stew a bit longer in my kitchen.

Book club night was my favorite of the month, but tonight it seemed my reckless mother, Trina, and my twenty-one-year-old daughter, Camilla, were in cahoots to give me an ulcer.

I wanted to scream.

Alicia returned to the kitchen, a bright smile on her petal-pink lips. She pushed a hank of stick-straight brown hair behind each ear and leaned against my counter. “Any luck? Did you hear from either one?”

“Nope.” Mom didn’t answer her phone, and my text chain with my daughter had cobwebs forming in the corners.

I tucked my cell phone into my pocket, then passed Alicia a tray of freshly plated blueberry chiffon tartlets. “I’m sure everything is fine.”

She quirked a neatly sculpted brow. “Tell your face.”

I frowned, then worked to relax my features. “Better?”

“Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes and lifted the tray.

Alicia was a beautiful paradox. She was petite and curvy with a naturally doe-eyed expression, and her small, youthful appearance often gave strangers the idea she was a gentle, helpless soul.

In truth, she had the mouth of a feral trucker and the attitude of an NFL linebacker.

I aspired to her personality, hating my often too timid and cautious nature.

She could keep the curves, however; I had no use for them or any idea how to use them.

Four inches taller than her five-foot-two frame, I was lean and narrow like a ballerina without the benefit of all the muscle and grace.

Alicia and I had met as freshmen at the University of Virginia. We’d been best friends for nearly thirty years since. Pretending with her didn’t work, and I knew it, but it never stopped me from trying.

“Okay. I’m worried,” I admitted. I worried incessantly about my mom and my daughter—their health, their happiness, and their general well-being.

I did everything I could for both of them, and we had long-established routines.

I visited Mom twice a month and traded text messages with Camilla daily, but for some infuriating reason, my mother wasn’t home when I stopped by today, and Camilla hadn’t responded to any of my texts since announcing a big trip with her longtime boyfriend, Jeff.

“My mom didn’t answer the door today, and I can’t get her on the phone. I thought she was out earlier, but now I’m wondering if she had a stroke in her living room, and I just shrugged, then drove away. Her place is a mess.”

My mom was diabetic and had no business drinking, but I swore she was drunk half the time I visited. I could hear it in her voice. The hoarding was at an all-time high too. At this point, I suspected I was the only one cleaning her house, and I could only get over there a couple of times a month.

“What if she tripped and fell and can’t get up?” The familiar heat of anxiety rose through my body like an inferno. I pulled my thick mass of brown hair over one shoulder and secured it with an elastic band.

“Your mom’s sixty-five, not one hundred. I think she could’ve reached the phone to call for help if she fell.”

I wasn’t so sure.

“How about this?” Alicia offered. “If you’re still worried after book club, I’ll ride over with you and we can peek in her windows. I’ve got time, and it won’t be the first time we’ve teamed up for a little surveillance.”

I smiled. Alicia had climbed on my shoulders more than once in our twenties, catching cheating boys in a low-tech era.

These days I’m sure there’s an app for that.

“I can’t tonight,” I admitted. “I don’t know when Robert will be home, and you know how he is.

He’ll have a coronary if I even mention her.

” My husband had never liked my mother, and his level of unhappiness with her quadrupled every year.

“If I’m not here when he gets home, I definitely don’t want to be at Mom’s place. ”

Alicia’s eyes narrowed. She hated my husband and all his pedantic, patriarchal rules and nonsense. I didn’t blame her. I hated him, too, but that was a problem for another night.

“It’s just easier not to bring her up,” I said. “He’ll take the opportunity complain about what an awful human she is.” I puffed out a breath. “She’s not the greatest, but she’s my mom.”

My mother had spent my childhood shielding me from Dad’s drinking and temper, instead of leaving him for both our sakes.

Her vigilance kept her on edge, depressed, and exhausted.

I’d felt more like a burden than her child for most of my formative years.

She was so busy deflecting my dad’s behavior that she never really got to know me.

By the time I hit middle school, I resented her for what I’d endured at home and for dozens more reasons that I didn’t even understand.

Dad never hit me, but his presence and treatment of my mother had brutally murdered my innocence and stolen my childhood.

He’d been dead for nearly eighteen years, but I was still mad at him.

Much to my dismay, after his death Mom spiraled instead of healing.

She drank to numb her pain and refused to do anything that might bring her joy.

Mom and I weren’t friends, and we had very little in common, but we were eternally tethered by our shared trauma and DNA. So when she didn’t respond, I worried.

“I wish I knew how to help her,” I said. “In general,” I clarified. “Assuming she’s fine right now.”

“Sometimes you can’t fix things or help people,” Alicia said. “And that’s okay. If she’s not ready or willing to make big changes, it’s no one else’s business, even if you really want it to be.”

I made a vomit face. “I just want everyone to be safe, healthy, and happy. Is that too much to ask?”

Alicia studied me. “Have I told you lately that you’re an incredible human? You tell me all the time, but sometimes I worry I don’t tell you enough.”

My gaze jumped to meet her eyes, and a sharp sting of emotion hit my chest. “Thank you. And you do.”

She smiled. “I mean it. I know how hard you work to protect everyone and everything. You’re a top-tier mom and the very best friend. A phenomenal baker. A better wife than Robert deserves, and a wonderful, kind, compassionate daughter. I get busy and forget to say so.”

I rubbed the place above my aching heart with my palm. “Camilla was with Jeff last night when we talked, but I can’t reach her now. Do you think she’s okay?”

“Oh, please,” Alicia said. “Jeff would protect her with his life. Plus, they’re twenty-one and in love. They probably had a late night, rolled out of bed in the afternoon, and went out again.”

“I’d be happy with a thumbs-up emoji. I don’t need a whole diary entry. Proof of life shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

Alicia lowered the tray and leaned against the counter. “I get it. You see me worry about my boys, and they’re all built like brick walls. I can’t imagine having a daughter. The world is not kind to women her age. Or any age, really.”

“You aren’t helping.”

“But she’s with Jeff,” Alicia added. “He’ll keep the creeps and pervs of the world at bay. We still like Jeff, right?”

I nodded. Jeff was a nice kid, smart, and he adored my daughter, actively and with verve.

That was part of the problem. “The last few texts she sent were about a big trip she’s taking after finals.

” Until now, she and her boyfriend had been content spending summers at the lake or hiking through national parks.

“Jeff invited her to the Maldives. They’re staying in one of those huts on the water. ”

“Ooh,” Alicia said, eyes alight. “Nice.”

I opened my mouth to say it absolutely was not nice. That this was obviously his plan to woo her into a wedding engagement. That Camilla was the same age I’d been when I accepted Robert’s proposal, and look where that had gotten me. But someone rapped on the kitchen door.

I spun to look at the clock above my stove. “Shoot. I lost track of time. Hold that thought.” I hustled into the pantry and pulled a pastel-pink bakery box from the top shelf, then hurried to greet my caller.

“Hello,” I cooed, brightening my smile as I opened the door I typically used for business transactions.

The scent of lilacs floated to me on the soft spring breeze, mixing with the aromatic notes of vanilla and chocolate rising from my box.

Southern Virginia was beautiful any time of year, but spring was my favorite season.

Blooming flowers always gave me hope for new beginnings, and I was in desperate need of exactly that.

A harried women in her thirties stood at the door, looking anxiously at me, then the box. “Bless you,” she said, pushing fallen locks of hair away from her weary face. Her messy bun was hanging on by a thread, and she had two similar, but different, loafers on her feet.

“I couldn’t have done this on my own,” she said. “There just isn’t time.”

I nodded in full understanding. “The life of a mother is a twenty-four seven occupation.”

She sagged visibly, and I fought the urge to hug her.

Kids screamed in the minivan behind her. “They never tell us they need treats for twenty classmates until the day before. Why do they do that? I work sixty hours a week and barely sleep as it is.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I said. “I’ve been there. I get it.”

She set a thin stack of cash on the box. Then we traded. I got the money. She got the pastries.