Chapter 9
Two hours after leaving her house in Tunnel Hill, CK pulled her black SUV into Gemma’s brick driveway in the Atlanta suburb
and honked the horn once, twice, and then a long third time for added annoyance. For CK and Gemma, this kind of playful irritation
was the foundation of their friendship, a bond born in sarcasm, teasing, and laughter.
Celia Kate spent every moment of the entire two-hour ride to Gemma’s worrying about things back home. Sophie had called to
say she wasn’t sure if she could continue reading Watership Down by Richard Adams because she couldn’t bear to read about one of the rabbits dying. CK couldn’t remember if the protagonist,
Hazel, was killed in the novel, so she encouraged Sophie to start Little Women instead. Tucker also called to ask where more nails were because he was working on his fort’s roof. Surprisingly, Silas had
yet to call his mother that morning.
CK honked the horn again, and, wearing a cute short-sleeved black knee-length dress with tall brown boots, Gemma stepped out of the side door of her white-brick home shaded by oaks.
It was a beautiful, classic house—a farmhouse in the middle of the city—reflecting the black and white trend seen across the United States, thanks to Joanna Gaines.
Gemma had no fewer than three barn doors in her home and a “Fresh Eggs” sign on the wall, though CK knew the eggs in Gemma’s refrigerator were shipped from a large-scale egg farm to the superstore next to the strip mall.
Gemma stumbled toward CK’s honking SUV, her breath coming in slight gasps as she struggled to pull an extra-large pink suitcase
behind her, its wheels clattering on the brick pavers. A matching overnight bag swung from her arm, while in her other hand
she clutched a stainless-steel cup and a grocery sack overflowing with what appeared to be an assortment of snacks. CK knew
she was going to have to hold her tongue. Gemma had shared her latest doctor’s report with her a few days ago—her bad cholesterol
was high, her good cholesterol was nonexistent, and her blood pressure was teetering on hypertension; issues that could all
be resolved with a healthy diet and exercise. But she wouldn’t admonish her or be responsible for chipping away at any more
of Gemma’s self-esteem. That was Tyler’s job.
As Gemma reached the vehicle, she opened the back door, its hinges creaking slightly, and started tossing her belongings into
the space with haphazard motions.
“Why in Sam Hill do you keep honking the horn? You’re going to get the HOA called on me! I’m already on thin ice with them
because that delinquent Carolina is dating drives a monster truck with the loudest exhaust on earth. Every time he comes over
it sounds like a freight train rolling through the neighborhood.”
CK turned in the driver’s seat and asked Gemma, “What do you possibly have in that enormous suitcase? We’re going to Moira’s
for one weekend, not Seville for a month.”
“My clothes are big, CK.” Gemma huffed. “Big clothes need a big suitcase.”
“And what about that other one?” she inquired, watching as Gemma slammed the back door and crawled into the passenger seat, her face still flushed from the effort of lugging the heavy bags. She forcefully placed the tumbler into the cup holder, and the ice cubes clinked together.
“In that other bag is everything I need to carry my weight well,” Gemma replied with a cheeky grin, placing the grocery sack
on the center console. “That should be enough food to tide me over for a few minutes.”
CK gripped the steering wheel and looked at her friend. “I’m not listening to you make fun of yourself for the next three
days. Stop putting yourself down or I’m leaving you here.”
“Okay, okay.” Gemma nodded and rifled through her snacks. “Look, we haven’t even left the driveway and already my sugar is
low.”
“Gemma, I’m serious about this,” CK said sternly. “I’m taking you on this trip, not Tyler, but already I hear stuff he would say coming out of your mouth.”
“Only when donuts aren’t going in my mouth.” Gemma snickered.
“Gemma!” CK scolded before she threw her hands in the air.
Gemma laughed. “Okay, I’m sorry, CK. I am good enough. I am smart enough. And, doggone it, people like me.”
CK first met Tyler Gardner in 1994 when he accompanied Gemma to their hangout in the grocery store parking lot, where high school kids gathered on truck tailgates after football games to talk and sing the Seattle grunge catalog.
It didn’t take long for Celia Kate to realize she wasn’t going to be a fan of his.
Gemma laughed and playfully swatted at his arm while CK and Moira exchanged looks of disgust at his degrading remarks about her weight.
CK’s mama used to say that a boy was mean to a girl because he liked her.
While this might have been true for younger kids, Gemma believed it still applied—even at seventeen.
But CK saw his actions for what they were: belittling and ridiculing.
She would never say it out loud, but a callous thought flitted through CK’s mind when Gemma eagerly tore open a crinkly bag
of chips and the sound of the crumpling package echoed in the car as she drove out of the neighborhood. Bet you can’t eat just one . . . bag. The Tyler-esque jab immediately made CK wince and feel like a lousy friend.
It was plain to see that Gemma had put on more weight since their last get-together on the Fourth of July, when they had spent
a carefree day at Lake Lanier, basking in the sun and splashing in the water. The only annoyance of the day was Tyler’s drunken
insults about Gemma’s swim skirt, coupled with a bet he made with his daughter about whether his kindhearted wife would sink
or float when she entered the cool water. More than once that afternoon Sean had to calm Celia Kate down.
“Hey, giving Tyler a piece of your mind would only make things worse. And if you say something to him, he’s liable to say
something back to you, and then I’ll have to kill him and I really don’t want to commit murder on my day off,” Sean said to
his wife after swimming over to where she lounged on a raft away from the others.
She’d taken his hand resting on the float and said, “Thank you for being a good husband.”
While Gemma savored the saltiness of the potato chips, she gazed out the passenger side window and quietly sighed in relief to be leaving Atlanta and Tyler and senior year madness behind.
She was excited about the food and friendship that awaited her.
CK and Moira were the only two people with whom she could truly be herself without fear of ridicule.
They loved her enough to let her live on her terms, and they never insulted her or even suggested that she lose an ounce of weight.
She could eat all she wanted in their presence without fear of judgment.
“So what’s new?” CK veered the SUV onto the interstate, and the GPS updated their estimated time of arrival to five hours
and twelve minutes.
“Not much. Carolina and I had a pretty heated argument this morning.”
Gemma and Tyler’s only child, Carolina, didn’t resemble her mother in the slightest. Tall and thin, she had been crowned Miss
Pre-Teen Georgia a few years earlier. Carolina adored her mother but often teamed up with her dad to poke fun at her. “Mama,
you’re my big, safe, squishy place to land,” she would say when she rested on her shoulder after a hard day. Or “Mama, I love
you as big as your belly.” Gemma would laugh at her daughter’s comments, but they only made her more self-conscious.
Gemma continued, “Carolina really wants to go to the Virgin Islands for her senior trip—with Colton. Has she lost her mind?
I’m not allowing my daughter to go off to a foreign country with her boyfriend, especially not at my expense!”
CK set the cruise control and replied, “I’m fairly certain that the Virgin Islands are not a foreign country, Gemma. They
are an unincorporated territory of the United States.”
“It might as well be Russia, CK. And she’s not going!” Gemma shifted in the passenger seat.
“It blows my mind how much kids expect these days just for graduating high school. You and I didn’t go on a senior trip.”
“No, we sure didn’t. Moira’s daddy took her somewhere exotic like Seychelles, but you and I spent our summer after high school graduation at the Dairy Dream. We lived off chocolate shakes and chicken strip baskets,” Gemma reminisced with a broad smile.
“Oh my goodness. I haven’t thought about one of those peanut butter and chocolate shakes since Dairy Dream closed ten years
ago. Remember they were so thick that we could turn the cup upside down and it wouldn’t even drip out?” CK raised her eyebrows.
“Man, that was some good ice cream.”
“Virgin Islands,” Gemma grumbled, looking out the passenger window at the trees whizzing by. “She won’t be a virgin after
spending the weekend alone with that raging hormone Colton Conway.”
CK laughed. “What does Tyler think about it? Surely he isn’t going to let his little girl run off on a vacation with her boyfriend.”
Gemma let out a heavy sigh and furrowed her brow. “She hasn’t talked to him about it yet. But as asinine as it sounds for
a dad to let his daughter shack up with her boyfriend across the ocean, I’m sure she’ll get his approval. All Carolina needs
to do is bat those baby blues and stick out her bottom lip and Tyler will melt like butter at his baby girl’s request. Then
I’ll have to fight with both.”
“It seems like it’s always you against them, Gemma. You’re supposed to be a team,” CK said as she glanced at her.
“On our team, they’re the star players and I’m the big loser on the bench.” Gemma popped another handful of chips into her
mouth, then folded the bag closed. She pressed the cool metal tumbler to her lips and took a generous swig of tea sweetened
with sugar, not aspartame, to wash away the salt lingering in her throat. “I’m putting my foot down this time, though.”
Gemma dreaded the argument that was sure to follow when her husband and daughter approached her, united in their ridiculous decision that Carolina should escape to the beach with Testosterone Timmy or whatever his name was.
The very thought of them ganging up on her made her want to tear open the bag of starchy chips again.
After all, food had always provided Gemma with the comfort she needed. Especially her mama’s food.
Linda Howell got to work in the kitchen to whip up a homemade chicken pot pie after Gemma returned home from the water park
with her church youth group, crying that some strangers had followed her around the park all day to make fun of her. Another
time, when Gemma came home from school feeling embarrassed because her custom-made cheerleading uniform was a slightly different
shade of burgundy than the other girls’, Linda consoled her with a chocolate meringue pie. If Gemma were to call her mother
and tell her Tyler and her granddaughter were bullying her again, she would insist Gemma make the short drive to their home
in Alpharetta for a fried chicken dinner, along with enough strawberry cake to take back home in a Tupperware container for
a midnight snack.
They rode in comfortable silence for a few minutes, both lost in their own thoughts.
A text message alert suddenly appeared on the screen on CK’s dashboard. It was from Silas, asking his mother where the cereal
was.
“I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from him yet this morning. It’s because he just woke up,” CK said before she pressed a
button on her steering wheel and spoke her reply: “It’s in the pantry on the second shelf.”
Almost immediately, Silas sent another text that read, I checked. It isn’t there. Where else could it be?
Gemma watched a roaring semitruck out the window and secretly rolled her eyes at Silas’s dependence on his mama before, once more, CK pressed the button and spoke into the car’s speaker: “Check the cupboard next to the refrigerator.”
A moment passed before Silas replied, It’s not there either.
CK pressed the button on her steering wheel again and Gemma shouted, “CK! Good grief! That is enough!”
“What?”
“Are you really going to keep texting your teenage son different places to search for the cereal? Should we turn the car around
and go back to Tunnel Hill so you can find the box of Fruity Pops for your baby?” Gemma asked, frustrated.
“I have never fed my kids Fruity Pops,” CK retorted sharply. “Do you have any idea how much dye and chemicals are in those
things? Kids would be safer slurping a bowl of weed killer.”
“Well, whatever organic, whole-grain, dye-free, non-GMO cereal you choose to buy, I’m confident Silas can find it. And if
he can’t, he’s not going to sit there and starve, is he? He can figure it out, CK.”
“Can he, though?” Celia Kate let out a sigh.
“If you let him, he can,” Gemma said before she pressed the tumbler of sugary tea to her lips and took a slow sip.
CK clicked her blinker and merged around a slow sedan being driven by an older woman who could barely see over the steering
wheel. “I do too much for my kids, I know. Silas especially. But I refuse to see any harm in helping the kid find his Coconut
Puffs.”
“Not the Coconut Puffs.” Gemma groaned and rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, and they are made with real coconut.” CK gripped the wheel.
“I’m not going to defend my parenting style to you for the next five hours.
If I wanted to do that, I could have stayed home with Sean.
You worry about your kid going to the Virgin Islands and I’ll worry about mine not knowing how to iron his shirts because I have always done it for him, okay? ”
Gemma knew CK well enough to know that her lashing out meant she was freaking out about leaving her family for a few days.
She reached over and rested her hand on her best friend’s shoulder.
“I trust you left instructions for Silas, Sophie, and Tucker for school? Numbers for the police, fire department, and poison
control?” Gemma asked while CK cut her eyes at her. “Seriously, Celia Kate, they’ll be just fine. Silas will probably find
the Coconut Puffs in some crazy, unexpected place like the broom closet. They’ll have breakfast, get their Friday work done,
and Chipper Jones will munch on a can of tuna. Sean will come home to happy, healthy kids and play air hockey with them. Everything’s
going to be just fine, all right?”
“I don’t think I left the poison control number for them,” CK said, looking worried as Gemma gave her shoulder a pinch before
pulling her hand away.