Chapter Twenty-Six
When Lana and I got back from the Egg the next day around noon, debris from the night before still littered the table. Wineglasses. The champagne bottle. Various plastic cups. And the mug speaker, now filled with pistachio shells.
Anne was at the end, studiously moving things around in the dollhouse.
The last I’d seen her, she was heading toward Kasey’s with a wobbly Liz, where they planned to crash.
I’d followed behind, ostensibly to ensure they made the short walk across the driveway safely.
Really, though, I was looking for Ben, who had left around the same time.
I caught up with him just down the driveway.
“Might not make it tonight,” I told him, keeping my voice low. “Since it’s late already.”
“Daytime Us had a big day,” he agreed. He moved a little closer, touching my arm. “Not that I’m complaining.”
I smiled. “If you were, we’d have bigger things to talk about than logistics.”
“Logistics are hot, though.” As if to prove it, he bent down, putting his lips to mine. Kissing away from the dock was another first. I liked how we kept adding them.
Now there was another clank from the dollhouse. “Didn’t expect you to still be here,” I said to Anne. “You guys must have seriously slept in.”
“Lucky,” Lana grumbled. “Meanwhile, I’m exhausted and have syrup caked in my hair.”
I was sporting a grease stain on my own sleeve that in shape resembled the state of Texas. Aprons could only do so much.
“We’ve been up for a while,” Anne replied. “Mom went home to hydrate.”
“I need more coffee,” my mom announced as she emerged from Juvie, a cup in her hand. “It’s definitely a two-pot morning.”
“It’s actually afternoon,” I pointed out.
She made a face at me as the door banged. A moment later, Liz appeared. She was, indeed, carrying a comically large water bottle. A straw, jaunty, poked out the top.
“Oh God. I’d forgotten about the pistachios,” she said, putting it down with a clank. She began to gather glasses and trash. “This is why I don’t drink. Anne! Did you not go home to change?”
“Not yet,” Anne replied.
“We don’t have that much time, honey. The venue walk-through is at one.” Liz looked at us, adding, “There will be mock-ups of table settings, flowers, everything. I can’t wait to see it.”
Anne did not respond. In fact, she’d gone very still again, although I could see her through the little windows of the dollhouse.
The door sounded again and Kasey came in. “Well, look who’s finally stirring. The dancing queens.”
“I seem to remember some booty shaking from your direction as well,” Liz said. She picked up her water bottle, taking a big sip of the straw.
“And I felt every bit of it when I was up at six thirty,” Kasey replied, stifling a yawn. “Cardoon and his vans. He showed up as soon as I unlocked the door.”
I looked at Lana, who was our Cardoon contact. But she was staring at the dollhouse, and Anne behind it.
“Hey,” she said, her voice sharp. “What’s wrong?”
Liz looked at her daughter. “Something’s wrong?”
Anne remained silent. Finally, she said in a small voice, “I called off the wedding.”
It took us a minute. Then Lana said, “Wait, what?”
Anne cleared her throat, glancing at Liz. “Last night. Before the clambake.”
No wonder she’d been so quiet on the ride home. And how had she been talking about mail trucks before that? “Pretty big thing to keep all to yourself,” I said.
“Especially with all that dancing,” Kasey added. “Inhibitions were being lost left and right.”
“Shhh!” Liz waved a hand at us, then turned back to Anne. “Sweetheart! What happened?”
“We were talking with Kathy and Joe about the dresses.” Anne swallowed, visibly, then tucked a lock of her pale hair behind one ear.
“Well, they were talking. I was trying to, but everyone kept cutting me off, or speaking over me altogether. When I finally got a word in, I heard myself say I didn’t want to get married anymore. And it was true.”
“Wow,” my mom said. “Well. Good for you.”
It was not lost on me that blowing up a tradition was what immediately got my mom’s approval.
“If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right,” Liz said. Anne’s eyes filled with tears. She moved over to collect her daughter in her arms. “You trusted your instincts. That’s the bravest thing you can do.”
“I don’t feel brave.” Anne sniffled. “Just sad.”
As her mom again patted her shoulder, I looked over at the dollhouse.
The tiny living room and porch were set for what looked like a party: chairs lined up, a couple of plastic pots with tiny colorful flowers on either side of them.
The piano there too, the little cakes arranged neatly on top of it.
All that was missing was the people. So that was what Anne had been doing over here, all this time.
It was so much easier in miniature. You could make a world just like you wanted, furnishing it as you would a room: love, family, friends, each with their own set place. At full-size and in real life, things got complicated. If only you could hold all you wanted in the palm of your hand.
“Seriously?” Ben said. “She’d just called off the biggest thing she’s got going and she’s talking to us about mail trucks?”
“I thought the same thing,” I said.
We were sitting against the Egg’s door, his arms around me, legs tangled together.
When I’d come around the corner and up the ramp, we hadn’t greeted each other or even spoken.
I’d just gone right to him, sliding my hands around his neck and pressing my lips to his.
We’d only missed one night recently. But I still had this feeling, like I needed to make up for the lost time.
Maybe it was Anne, who had been so certain since I’d met her about not only her own future but mine, as well. If a wedding—the ultimate plan, with all the accompanying details and moving pieces—could be canceled, what did that mean for the smaller things, even if they felt big to me?
I had a flash of me and Colin, curled up not unlike this at the guesthouse on graduation night. I’d had the same sudden, gasping worry then. And look how that had turned out.
As if sensing this, Ben now shifted, pulling me closer. I leaned my head back, feeling his breath in my ear. Maybe this was the moment I should ask if we’d be okay. But I didn’t even know what we were, really. So I said nothing.
A little later, I was returning to the house, the taste of him still on my lips. As I crossed the grass, I saw something by the water.
Someone, actually. They had their back to me and for a moment they were a stranger. But then, in the next beat, I realized: It was my mom. She had her knees pulled to her chest, her hair blowing back a bit in the breeze coming off the lake. I walked over slowly, not wanting to startle her.
“Hey,” I said, once I was within earshot. Despite my efforts, I saw her jump before she turned, making me out in the dark.
“What are you doing awake?” she asked. “It’s so late.”
“You’re up,” I pointed out.
She cocked her head to one side, acknowledging my point. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.” Well, it wasn’t like I was going to tell her I’d been making out with a boy for hours. Even if I did know she could relate.
“I woke up thinking about the surgery,” she said. “But then everything else flooded in as well.”
I sat down beside her, the sand damp under me. “Like what?”
“My family. The house.” She sighed, quietly. “This place does that. It’s full of ghosts. One reason I’ve stayed away.”
“Ghosts or memories?” I asked.
“Sometimes they’re the same thing,” she replied, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “Especially when you come home.”
Home. It was the first time I’d heard her refer to it with that word.
Or any place, now that I thought of it. She’d been moving, city to city, for as long as I could remember.
Unlike Ben, though, I was pretty sure that was how she’d wanted it.
It was me, I realized, that was her constant.
The planet, fixed, around which she orbited.
“Look,” she said. “You’ve heard a lot of stories while you’ve been here, I’m sure. About my mother and father, my sisters. Me.”
I nodded. “I have.”
“The weddings on the porch. The Judge and his legacy. My parents’ wonderful, inspiring marriage, built strong over the years, just like this house.”
I thought of all the pictures, the wedding album.
“There’s this thing about stories that are passed down, though,” my mom continued. “Depending on the person, certain details are emphasized. Others smoothed over, if not omitted completely.”
“Hard to know the truth,” I observed.
“Exactly.” She looked at the water again. “But to be here, and part of this… you have to believe what you’re told. It’s like an exchange, an agreement.”
I trailed my hand through the sand, drawing a line. “So that’s why you left? You didn’t believe?”
“I wanted to,” she said. “But then I saw my dad with a waitress from Dupont’s at a hotel in Bly Corners one day after school.”
I felt myself blink: once, twice.
“When I confronted him, he said I was mistaken.” She bit her lip. “I will never forget that. How confident—audacious—it was to tell a person to just disregard what they witnessed with their own eyes.”
“Pretty nervy,” I agreed.
She pulled her knees up to her chest. “Worse, that summer was their thirtieth wedding anniversary. They had a vow renewal and big party here at the house. All the speeches were about their great love story. Meanwhile, I’m watching everything, knowing it was a lie.”
Yikes. “That must have been hard.”
“Well, it was made even more difficult when I did some digging and found it wasn’t just one woman, but several over the years. Including Cheryl, who was Mrs. Bigby’s best friend.”
I thought of Kate, in her fanny pack, the way she regarded my face, familiar. Like she had seen layers in me, wholly different from ones that I’d been discovering in my time here.
“He made bad decisions. And I knew about them—and he knew I knew. So I felt like I had to make a choice as well.” She shifted, pushing a hand through her hair. “All or nothing. I went with the second one.”
“So that was that?” I replied. “You just cut ties with all of them?”
“It felt like the only thing I could do.” She sighed. “He wasn’t changing. Neither was this place. So I just removed myself.”
These words were so clinical. Like it was that easy. Maybe for her, it was. But here, now, I needed her to know I saw it another way.
“Is that what you did with me, too?” I asked.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “That was different. I was the liar.”
This was not the word I was expecting. “Liar?”
“I was unhappy,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault. But I couldn’t fake it. And I didn’t want my sadness to become your sadness.”
I thought of my baby book, opened and then closed. “I was sad without you, though.”
Another silence. I hated awkwardness, always had. But this time, I didn’t try to chase it away.
“I’m so sorry, Finley,” she said finally.
Weird how you don’t know what you need until you get it. And right then, I realized how very much I had needed this: just to be honest with her.
“That’s the problem with all-or-nothing thinking, or so I am learning,” she said. “It’s the same thing that appeals. There’s no in-between.”
“Maybe there is, though,” I said.
She cocked her head to the side. I had her attention.
Now I took a beat before saying, “Maybe not in that moment. But look at us. We’re here, now. I never would have thought it was possible. But somehow, it’s…”
I paused. Thinking of the right words to follow.
“Not all and not nothing,” she finished for me. And there they were. “Somewhere in the middle.”
That vast, open middle. So much space for both fear and hope.
We were similar, my mom and I, and not just in our shared looks. I, too, had thought that my own life could only be one way: Colin, college, everything planned out. By bringing me to this place, even if she hadn’t planned to do so, she’d taught me otherwise.
I’m different here, I’d told Lana. But even then I wasn’t, not yet. Now I felt this truth catch up with me. With us. All that was left was to let it settle in.