February 2021
Hello, all, Jory Harcourt here back for the February edition of He Said, he said.
I was going to regale you all with funny New Year’s stories, but there really weren’t any.
It was low-key. We had Dane and Aja and the kids over, as well as Duncan and Aaron, and played a never-ending game of Monopoly.
Dane and Aaron combined their resources, Kola and Duncan and Robert combined theirs, and Sam and Hannah somehow came out on top.
Duncan complained that Sam had unionized public works, and I washed my hands of all of them.
I mean, come on, it’s supposed to be a game.
We had a quiet Imbolc, as the coven had to convene on Zoom because it was far too cold to do anything outside on the first day of February, same for the second.
I was racking my brain trying to think of what I could do for my husband on Valentine’s Day that he’d love and would be special, without us going out since the mere thought makes him snarly.
And sitting together, across a candlelit table, with masks on, doesn’t really convey romance. Better to stay home.
A woman was in line in front of him and Hannah at the store the other day, without a mask, and Sam had the store manager ask her to put one on or get out.
He got a round of applause, but several people called him a fascist as well.
The thought process behind not wearing a mask, or wearing one poorly, made him nearly homicidal, so since he got enough of it at work and when he was out, I wanted to do something romantic at home.
Beyond sex, though, I had trouble coming up with anything, and really, if Sam Kage wanted me, ever, I was his. Not much of a romantic gesture there.
I was racking my brain the morning before, on Saturday, wondering if heels and garters, sexy lingerie, and lipstick might do it for my marshal when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Jory”—Jake’s mother, Linda, sighed my name—“I need to speak to you.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know how to––” Her voice hitched. “Jake’s father and I are getting a divorce.”
My heart clutched tight. I had always considered Jake’s parents to be the type who didn’t necessarily show how they felt about each other in public, but behind closed doors their bond was probably warm and sentimental.
Apparently, I was mistaken. Or I’d been right for years but something, somewhere, had deteriorated.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” she replied with a wobble in her voice. “You’d think after twenty-three years I would give up my ridiculous notions about falling madly in love someday and resign myself to planning my retirement.”
She was trying to kill me.
“But it turns out the whole idea of getting a divorce and having a do-over is simply far more appealing than I ever imagined.”
“I seem to recall you telling me you were young when you got married.”
“I was. Only eighteen. We thought we knew what we were doing. Of course, when we were ready to call it quits two years later, that’s when I got pregnant with Jake’s sister, and then two years later, with him.”
She had two kids, Jake being the youngest at nineteen.
“And now?”
“Now my Etsy shop is doing really well, Reese is out of the house, and, Jory, I want to move to Silverlake, California.”
“Oh?”
“Yes”—she sighed deeply—“a friend of mine is taking a sabbatical to teach in Barcelona for a year, and she offered me her home, which has a gorgeous adjoining cottage I can use for my studio.”
Jake’s mother was a talented potter; her ceramics had appeared in many local art exhibitions, and her online shop was, in fact, doing very well, if the number of sales and five-star reviews was any indication.
“And when she returns?”
“Then she’ll give me the opportunity to buy it if I love it and it works. It’s a win-win.”
It certainly sounded like it.
“I need to go before I waste even one more minute here.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Thank you.” She exhaled, her voice bottoming out for a moment. “I feel the same. But this brings me to the reason for the call, beyond the fact you’ve been a loyal friend since our kids met in kindergarten. I appreciate you more than you know.”
“Same,” I assured her.
“Well, Jake’s father and I talked, and it’s all going to be very amicable, as I suspect it is when both parties stopped caring ages ago.”
“God, Linda, I have to tell you I always thought you and Bill just weren’t PDA kind of people, and that together, in your home––”
“I know. You’re not the only one.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted you. Please continue.”
“Jake’s dad is planning to move back to Sturgeon Bay to be closer to his family, his folks and siblings, and that leaves Jake suddenly between homes.”
But Jake would be going to college with Harper, in person, once Covid was under control.
He had originally been on his way somewhere else, which I couldn’t dredge up at the moment, but had altered course.
Since Harper was going to the University of California-Berkeley, and Kola was going to Stanford, it made no sense, he said, for him to be the only one who remained on the East Coast. Of course, that was before he fell head over heels for my daughter.
Lately, from what Hannah had been hinting at, Jake was thinking maybe the University of Chicago was the ticket.
None of that was on Linda’s mind. Her only concern was her son. “Originally, I would be in California, and so would he, but now…he’s sort of crazy about your daughter, Jory.”
I grunted.
She chuckled.
It was funny, because for a while, we’d had a houseguest. Lucy had been lovely, very sweet, a friend of Hannah’s, but as much as I liked her, there were still times when I missed it being us, our family.
When her father returned from his last deployment, and they moved to Oregon, I had been thrilled.
The difference was Kola’s two friends, Jake and Harper, had been with us, in our lives, in our home, sleeping on our couches, eating our food, doing chores, simply underfoot, since they were both five years old.
Having Jake or Harper in my home did not constitute guests.
As much as I loved my brother’s kids, some of my friends’ kids, or any of Sam’s sisters’ kids, the fact was that none of them were so seamlessly interwoven with us as were Jake and Harper.
“I will keep your kid, Linda, and he’s nineteen, so you don’t even have to sign him over to me,” I teased her.
“Will it be weird since they’re dating?”
“No,” I assured her. “Sam and I already decided if they break up, we’d still keep Jake.”
She chuckled. “I appreciate it, and he’s got a job, and the money for school is there, and I’ll send him a ticket at Christmas.”
“You’re gonna miss your kids,” I warned her. “And Jake said Reese is expecting. That’ll be your first grandchild.”
“I will miss them, it’s true,” she agreed with me. “But God, Jory, shouldn’t I finally start living at forty-one? I don’t want to be fifty doing exactly what I’m doing now.”
It was sad to imagine her haunting her own home all those years.
“And I’m so sick of the cold and snow. It just makes everything worse.”
I loved being cold, hunkered down in my house, but we had two very different lives.
“When are you leaving?” I asked her.
“First week in March,” she informed me. “I can hardly wait.”
I was happy for her. I was. After we ended our call, I checked the beef stew in the slow cooker, thinking that since it was ten degrees outside, I’d made a good choice, especially since it looked like the arctic temperatures were not going anywhere.
It made me sad to think her marriage was over.
Grabbing my phone, needing my faith in love restored, I called Dylan.
“Oh dear God,” she growled instead of saying hello. “Are you psychic?”
“No. Why?”
“I was just about to call and tell you my only son is dropping out of college to pursue his music career.”
I made a face, which, thankfully, she couldn’t see.
“Jory,” she warned me, her tone dropping low, “you know you agreed with me that he should finish college before he starts touring the country in a van.”
“Yeah, but he’s really––”
“I will tell Hannah that being a superhero is a really good choice if you don’t back me up here. Christopher thinks––”
“You love him, huh?”
“Of course I love him! He’s my child. I would give him a kidney if he––”
“Not him. Christopher. You’ve been married over two decades now.”
There was a silence. “Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m not drunk.”
“Too much wine in the stew?”
“I––”
“Yes, Jory, my husband drives me batshit crazy, and yes, he still hangs the goddamn moon.”
I sighed quickly. “I thought so. I’ll call ya back,” I told her.
“No, wait. I––”
But she was gone, and Aja was picking up moments later.
“So, what did you decide on for Valentine’s Day for Sam?” Aja asked me. Like Dylan, there was no greeting, only a continual loop of conversation.
“Are you still madly in love with Dane, even after all these years?”
“Pardon me?”
“Well? Are you?”
“What kind of ridiculous question is––why, did he say something? We’ve both been so busy lately, it seems like even though we’re both working from home that––”
“He didn’t say anything. Jake’s parents are getting a divorce, so I’m in need of…you know, some hope.”
She sighed deeply. “Ah. Well, never fear, my darling. I love your brother dearly and desperately and everything in between, though the man needs to work on his communication.”
“No, really, this has nothing to do with––”
“Oh, look who came out of his office.” She huffed out a breath. “I’ll call you later.”
God.
I called Dylan back, and she put me on speakerphone with her husband, and we all agreed that yes, Micah finishing college before he started living out of the back of his van with the other four members of his band did seem like a no-brainer so he’d have something to fall back on.
But Micah’s argument was also valid. Living in fear of failure, preparing for defeat, making plans to live your life in mediocrity—that wasn’t positive.