Chapter 29
Fight or flight. Everything within me is shouting for the latter.
I sit in the passenger side of Miles’s Range Rover, trying to keep my lower lip from quivering.
I want to tell him to drive me home so I can crawl into my bed and stay there for a year.
My default is to retreat. But I’ve done that before. A part of me knows it won’t help, but right now I don’t care. I finally
know what I want. Screwing up and not being able to have it is ten times worse.
After fifteen minutes of driving in silence, Miles parallel parks his SUV—and I have no idea where we are. Miles turns off
the engine and gets out of the car without a word. He walks over to my side and opens the door.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“I’ll show you.”
I step out onto the sidewalk, and Miles closes the door, then starts walking down the block. We’re in an area of the city
where I haven’t been before, so I take a second to look around. There are tall apartment buildings lining the street and a
parking garage at the end of the block.
We cross the street, and I hear the sound of kids playing in the near distance. Miles leads me around the corner, revealing
a large playground nestled at the back of two perpendicular buildings.
Half of the space is a playground. Rounded wooden structures, short climbing walls, rope bridges, all themed around what looks like a pirate ship.
There’s a taller platform on one end with multiple ships’ steering wheels and a circular “crow’s nest” platform in the center, complete with several telescopes on stands.
The other half is open green space. Bigger than the quad at my college. Families on blankets pepper the grass, and I can see
two dads with dogs who have seemingly just met each other.
Kids are running around, chasing each other, shouting, maneuvering their way through tunnels and on top of spring-loaded mushrooms.
A small group of tiny humans is jumping on large, painted circles lining a sidewalk that runs the perimeter of the whole park.
The entire area is brightly colored with pockets of plants and flowers, and there’s plenty of space for parents to sit and
watch their kids play.
The park is interactive and obviously meant to encourage kids to use their imaginations, intricately planned and executed
with children in mind.
I follow Miles straight to the center of the park, a divide between the open space and the playground. Colorful, comfortable
benches face both directions, toward the kids and toward the grass, and he sits on a bench facing the playground, motioning
for me to do the same.
We’re both silent for a few long moments.
There’s a little girl who climbs a rope ladder to the top of a slide and scream-laughs the whole way down. Over and over again.
A trio of boys are taking turns crazily jumping off a mushroom into the mulch, where each one tries to land in a superhero
pose. They laugh every time, because they fall over every time.
A dad gently pushes his small daughter in a swing—but the thing that strikes me is that his daughter is in a wheelchair, and
the swing is a larger platform that the wheelchair expertly fits on. It was built and designed specifically for kids like
her in mind. She throws her hands in the air on every push, and the look on her face is pure joy.
For a second, I forget that my life is falling apart.
Again.
“A couple years ago, I almost sold my business,” Miles says, eyes trained on a man throwing a Frisbee to a golden retriever
in the distance.
My gaze latches onto him, but I don’t say anything.
“I found out my wife, Elizabeth, was having an affair with my VP. Brent.” Miles says this quickly, like it’s a memorized line
and not the first time he’s explaining the source of so much pain. “He was the guy I’d hired straight out of school and mentored,
thinking that he could keep things going while Elizabeth and I traveled, you know, after the girls grew up and moved out.
I had a whole plan.”
I shift slightly, angling my body toward him, resisting the urge to reach for him even though I know reliving this cannot
be pleasant. I think of the night I told him about John and Misty. How hard it had been to get the words out—and how Miles
wasn’t ready to do the same.
Somehow it makes this moment feel even more important.
“I came home early from work one afternoon,” he says coldly, shaking his head. “I didn’t usually come home early, but it was
the day before our anniversary. Thought I’d surprise her by taking her out.” He goes still. “I was . . . definitely surprised.”
He doesn’t look at me. “They were there in our house, together. In our bedroom. In our bed.” That last sentence has a twinge of hurt and anger in it.
I immediately recognize that tone. It’s unfortunately familiar.
My stomach twists, and in the back of my mind I see the silver sequins of Misty’s skirt and John’s hand on her thigh in the
shadowy corner of that country club lobby.
“She immediately launched into some kind of, I don’t know, speech? That she worked out in her head. She was feeling this way
for a while, it just kind of happened—”
He stops mid-sentence, making a fist and clenching his jaw.
“They were planning to tell me, they just hadn’t found the right time . . . or whatever.”
He scoffs softly but otherwise keeps his tone mostly emotionally detached, almost like he’s spitting out facts without letting
a single one penetrate through the wall he’s built around himself.
“I fired Brent. I packed a bag. I moved out. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, or how I was going to do it.” He looks
at me, half smiling. “I know you know how that feels. Directionless. Rudderless.”
I nod, hoping he can feel my empathy.
“A few days later, my accountant called me. She’d noticed some strange activity in one of the business accounts,” he says.
“The account she was concerned about was one I used specifically for pro bono projects for underserved communities”—he looks
around—“like this one.”
A little girl runs past us, kicking a soccer ball, her laughter filling the air. And I understand what he isn’t saying—this
park started as a dream in his head.
Just like my bakery.
“It turned out Elizabeth had been funneling money out of that account into a new account so she and Brent could start a business
of their own.”
“Oh my gosh.” I instinctively reach for his hand and squeeze it firmly.
While I understand the pain of an affair, this betrayal crossed a different line. I can imagine how much it hurt.
“We had joint accounts, and she had access to everything, so technically, she didn’t do anything illegal. Morally? Ethically?
She broke every single rule.”
“Miles, I’m so sorry,” I say.
He avoids my eyes. “For a long time, I thought it was my fault. I should’ve known what was happening right under my nose.
I should’ve paid closer attention.”
“I know how that feels,” I say quietly, not wanting to make this moment about my pain, but wanting him to know he’s not alone.
“It broke me. And my business. I was so embarrassed, I almost quit.” Now he glances in my direction. I meet his eyes for a
flicker of a second, then look away.
Because I understand what he’s doing.
I understand why he brought me here.
“And I could’ve. Easily. But then one morning I went for a walk. And after two hours of aimless wandering, I ended up here.
Only this entire block was just an open lot at the back of two stores. There are apartments around, so I knew there were families
in the area, and I thought . . . These kids deserve a safe place to play.” He does a quick scan of our surroundings. “And then I thought . . . I’m going to make them one.”
At one end of the park, there are three tiny wooden huts surrounded by bushes, and all I can think when I see them is that
any kid would love to get lost in this park for a little while.
He created something special where there was nothing.
“This was the project that brought me back to life,” he says.
He turns his body toward me.
“Like your bakery.”
I think about the new friends who’ve shown up to help me, and their genuine excitement for my project. I think about the life
I’m building, a life I desperately want to work.
“Are you really going to let a little salt ruin all your plans?” His eyes smile, and there’s a lilt of lightness in his tone.
At that, the tears are back, and I pull my hand from his to quickly wipe them away. “It was more than a little salt, Miles.”
I cringe to think of the cups and cups that had gone into those desserts.
“Life has a funny way of showing us what we’re made of and of bringing us exactly what—and who—we need.”
My gaze travels from our hands to his face, stopping when I meet his eyes.
“I’m terrified,” I say.
“So was I,” he says. Then, slowly and firmly, he says, “But you’re not alone.”
He’s right. I’m not. The thought is humbling, and I feel undeserving somehow.
“You think doing this big thing, on your own, means handling everything by yourself, but it doesn’t. It’s okay to ask for
help.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and gently squeezes. “That’s what friends are for, you know?”
I draw in a breath and look around, thinking about everything Miles has been through. I’m amazed that he’s come out of it
strong enough to create something as beautiful as the park we’re sitting in.
But I’m not sure I have the same strength.
Miles pats my shoulder twice, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone and what looks like a blue hockey puck.
“Okay, so I have a confession.”
“Not the greatest way to start a sentence with me.”
He winces. “Ope. You’re right. Sorry. It’s nothing bad. Just . . . when everything happened earlier, I reached out to Minnie.”
“You did not,” I say, instantly embarrassed. “Did you tell her what happened?”
“She already knew,” he says. “She follows all your accounts, and she has it set up so she’s alerted every time someone mentions
your name or your business.”
I close my eyes and groan, hoping that John isn’t tech savvy enough to do the same. But as soon as that thought enters my
head, another one replaces it—Who cares what John thinks?
He clicks around on his phone, then sets the hockey puck—which I now see is a small Bluetooth speaker—down on the bench. “She
told me that when she was little, if she ever had a bad day, the two of you had a tradition.”
His phone. A speaker. My eyes widen.
“And since she can’t be here, she made me promise that I’d do it with you.”
I think back to the years I spent dedicating every free second to being Minnie’s mom.
I’m momentarily struck with a wave of sadness that this time in my life has come and gone, in some ways, when I wasn’t even
looking.
But then I hear the familiar a capella opening of ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me” on the speaker.
I’m instantly transported back to Minnie’s very torturous middle school years. They were marked with mean girls and first
crushes and embarrassing puberty mishaps, and somehow, showing up in her room, blasting ABBA and forcing her to get up and
dance with me, was usually all it took to shift the mood.
In spite of everything, I smile.
Miles looks right at me, holds up his phone, and clicks the volume all the way up. It’s loud enough now to where people around
us hear it.
He stands and offers me a hand. “Dance with me?”
I look around. “Here?”
He shrugs. “Why not?”
“There are people,” I say dumbly.
“Who cares?” He shakes his hips as the drums kick in, and he starts to sing along—badly. A few of the kids notice him and
start laughing, but Miles doesn’t seem to care. He starts doing a strange disco move, pointing his fingers and undulating
his shoulders, first to one side, then the other.
Immediately some kids start mimicking him, doing the same moves.
“Come on, Claire.” He picks up the speaker and backs up, eyes locked onto mine, and points, beckoning me over with his finger.
I stand up, laughing, covering my face with my hands, and as the chorus kicks up, fueled by happy memories of my daughter and the pure joy on Miles’s face, I start to sway to the music.
Miles dances around me as two little girls point and laugh, their mothers on a nearby bench smiling at the sight of his genuine happiness as he dances around the playground with reckless abandon.
Little by little, I start to loosen up, remembering moves I’d perfected all those years ago in Minnie’s lavender bedroom.
Because it was always this song that cheered her. And now she was using it to cheer me—from thousands of miles away.
I begin to throw myself fully into the song, singing the words, dancing along, using my thumb as an air microphone and laughing
as Miles and I dance around the whole playground.
At this point, most of the little kids have joined in, forming a crazy jumping, dancing conga line behind us. Even some of
the parents are dancing with each other or showing off disco moves. Miles picks me up and twirls me around, eliciting shouts
and whoops and hollers from the kids. He jumps up on the mushrooms and starts to make his way around the wooden jungle gym,
with dozens of kids in tow.
I follow behind, climbing all the way up to the top of the structure, laughing all the way through the slow fade at the end
of the song.
And when it ends, the kids all cheer, and the parents even applaud. My spirit is lighter, with a fresh wave of laughter rolling
over me.
We’re standing on top of a wooden rope bridge, swinging slightly as kids run around us, shouting and cheering, and I meet
Miles’s happy gaze.
“Feel better?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah, I do.”
“Good,” he says. “Now let’s get to work.”
I’ve never really thought about the lyrics to “Take a Chance on Me.”
They’re incredibly fitting right now.
I was feeling down. The birds had all flown.
Then . . . Miles.
His playground made a great point.
And he’s right. I’m not about to let a little salt stop me.
I flip over to my list and confidently cross things out. Because I believe I’ve found them.
I want a job or career I love.
I want friends. Real ones.
I want to live in a new city.
I want a dog.
I want to figure out who I am—apart from a wife and a mom.
I want a place where I fit in. I want a place where I belong.
I want a hobby.
I want to do the things that scare me.
Have a meal by myself in public.
Strike up a conversation with a stranger.
Try new foods I’ve never had or can’t pronounce.
Download dating app.
I want to fall in love again.
I stare at the last one. My instinct is to erase the line through it . . . but I don’t.
Not yet.