Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Sophie
“Okay, so I’m dropping you off, then going to the nursery to pick up your plant order, then coming back to your Mom’s to rescue you?” Peter says from the driver’s seat of his SUV.
I buckle my seatbelt. “Is that okay? I might not need an escape route, but I’d like to have one just in case. I have no idea how Mom is going to handle hearing about this thing with Dad. If she just wants to rant all afternoon, I’d rather not stick around for it.”
“I’m here for you however you need me,” Peter says. “And the plant order will be ready to go?”
“Yes! I already talked to Miranda. She’s expecting you.”
Peter lifts an eyebrow. “Miranda, huh?”
“What?” I say, as innocently as possible. “She works there.”
“Right,” Peter says as he backs out of his parking space. “Doesn’t the nursery usually deliver your orders?”
I clear my throat. “But it’s so close to my mom’s house. Seems silly to make a box truck drive all the way to The Serendipity when we’ll be less than a mile away and you have all this perfectly good space in the back of your SUV.”
I’m pretty sure Peter sees right through me, but I’m desperate. After what happened at his parents’ house, I need him to start dating someone, and Miranda is perfect. She’s funny and pretty and likable and we’re just going to ignore the fact that every time I think about her with Peter, I want to punch someone.
It’s fine. A phase. Whatever this weird feeling is, it’ll pass, and then everything will go back to normal.
“Does your mom know you’re coming?” Peter asks.
“Yeah, I texted her. But she doesn’t know why. She thinks I’m just dropping in to catch up after the cruise.”
Dropping in on my mom is not my usual style. It’s not that we have a bad relationship. I just tend to need a little bit of preparation before we hang out… and then also a little time to recover after. I love my mom. But I don’t always understand her, and that leaves me feeling unsettled, unmoored somehow whenever we’ve been together. It’s gotten easier as I’ve gotten older, but mostly because I’ve gotten better at protecting myself. I retreat when I need to retreat. And I lean on Peter when I need someone to ground me again.
Peter pulls into my mother’s driveway but leaves the engine running. “All right,” he says. “I’ll come straight back here, so I won’t be long.”
I nod. “Okay, but don’t hurry. If you happen to start up any interesting conversations you don’t want to end, I won’t mind.”
“Not subtle, Soph,” Peter says dryly.
I smirk. “Who says I was trying to be subtle?”
Fake it till you make it, I think as I climb out of Peter’s SUV. I wave as he pulls away, then make my way onto Mom’s front porch.
She opens her front door wearing a gauzy white dress that looks more like a swimsuit coverup, sunglasses, and bedazzled flip-flops. As is typical, her hair falls in loose waves over her shoulders, and her makeup is perfect.
She looks exactly like how someone who has been cruising around the globe for the past three months should look: sunkissed and relaxed and perfectly happy.
I look down at my own cutoffs and oversized v-neck t-shirt. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m pretty comfortable with my crazy curly hair and freckled skin, with my mostly casual wardrobe and understated vibe. But sometimes I look at my mom and wonder how I ever came from her.
No one has ever made being beautiful look so effortless.
“Oh, my gosh! It’s so good to see you!” Mom says, pulling me into a hug. She smells like coconuts and sunscreen and Chanel N°5. She leans back, giving my shoulders a quick squeeze. “I’m so glad you came. Come sit by the pool. I made mimosas, and I can’t wait to tell you all about my trip.”
“Did you just say pool ?” I ask. Because last I checked, my mom did not have a pool in her backyard.
“Yes! Did I forget to mention it? It was installed while I was on the cruise.” She sashays through her kitchen, stopping at the double French doors that used to lead to a fairly boring backyard. Grass. A few trees. A concrete patio. I did more than one design for her while I was in school, but mom never seemed all that concerned about improving the space. Maybe I should have included a pool.
“Aren’t pools expensive?” I ask. By nature, my mother has always been a little more “live in the moment” than “save for a rainy day,” but after Charles cleaned her out, she’s been much more frugal, so splurging on a pool feels way out of character, even for her.
“A hundred and twenty grand for this one,” she says, “because of the water feature and the fire bowls.”
I step up beside her and look through the glass patio door. The backyard is completely different. And it’s stunning. Concrete decking, a gorgeous pool with a fountain situated at the far end, flanked by stone pillars holding bronze fire bowls. The landscaping lining the edge of the pool space is intentional and tasteful, as pretty as anything I would have designed myself.
“Mom, it’s incredible,” I say. “I can’t believe I didn’t know this was happening.”
“It was all rather sudden,” she says. “Pierre got a whim and thought it would be fun if the entire project happened while we were on our cruise.” She slides open the door, flashing me a dazzling smile. “Come see. It’s so much more gorgeous than I thought it would be.”
“Wait,” I say as I follow behind her. “ Pierre got a whim? Mom, did he pay for this pool?”
“I mean, technically yes, but I’ll have to cover the upkeep and cleaning.”
She pours a mimosa into a tall champagne flute and hands it over.
“How generous of him,” I say, taking the glass. I look over my shoulder. “But didn’t you break up? What happened to Jean-Luc?”
She waves a dismissive hand. “Jean-Luc was just a cruise fling. But Pierre and I did break up.”
I take a sip of my mimosa, not fully believing what I’m hearing. “So, he paid for your pool, and then you broke up ? Do you have to pay him back?”
“Honey, this pool was pocket change for him. He’s probably already forgotten about it.” She settles onto a lounge chair with her own mimosa and pulls her sunglasses down, tilting her face toward the warm, spring sunshine. “If the leggy brunette he met on the boat is any indication, he’s not thinking about me at all.”
I lower myself onto the deck chair beside hers. I hate to admit it, but with the sound of the water feature splashing into the pool, the warm spring breeze, the birds chirping overhead, it really does feel pretty magical out here.
Mom spends the next ten minutes giving me a rundown of her favorite moments from her trans-Pacific cruise. Tokyo, Bali, Singapore. She mentions Pierre multiple times, and every time, she speaks of him with affection and humor.
I don’t know how she does it. How she transfers her affection so easily. How she isn’t seething over the breakup. Maybe coming home to a brand-new backyard pool eased the sting a little?
“Can I ask you a question?” I say when Mom’s travelogue finally comes to an end.
She turns her head and smiles at me. “You can ask me anything.”
“Do you actually fall in love with all the men you date?”
“Of course I do,” she says easily, like it’s hardly a question worth asking.
“Really? All of them?”
“Sure,” she says. “Why would I date them if I didn’t?”
“But you don’t seem all that heartbroken over Pierre,” I say, still struggling to understand. “And you were with Jean-Luc, what, five minutes after you broke up? How could it have been real love if you aren’t sad about the relationship ending?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, eyes toward the sky. I start to wonder if she’s going to answer at all, but then she takes a deep breath and lifts her sunglasses from her face, pushing them up into her long auburn hair. “Look. I know some relationships last decades. Lifetimes. I saw clients married for twenty, thirty, forty years work through hardships and come out the other side even stronger. I know it’s possible. But that’s not how I’m built, Sophie. I did love Pierre. I loved our time together. I loved how much he made me laugh, how sweet he is with his grandkids. But it was time to move on. I knew it. He knew it. I loved him while it lasted, and I’ll love the next one, too.”
Mom pulls her glasses down and looks back up at the sun with an air of finality, like she has nothing more to say on the subject. But I’m not ready to leave it alone. She’s a therapist. She made a career out of helping people stay connected and weather life’s storms. It feels counterintuitive that she’s the one who keeps moving from man to man.
“But what if there is a man out there who you’re supposed to love forever?” I ask. “What if there’s someone so much better than all the other men you’ve been with?”
Mom lifts her glasses one more time and smirks. “If there is, I doubt he could afford this pool.”
I drop back onto my chair and drape an arm over my eyes to shield them from the sun. I didn’t wear sunglasses today, or bring a swimsuit, two things I might have done differently had I known Mom’s backyard had morphed into a tropical oasis.
I don’t want to think my mom is a liar. But if she really did love Pierre and Jean-Luc and Frank and Tom and Leonardo and all the others, I don’t think it’s the same kind of love the Hathaways have—the kind that makes my flower bloom.
I have to believe it isn’t. I have to believe that what I’m searching for is bigger than anything that fades or passes so quickly.
I’m also not naive enough to miss the layers hiding behind my mother’s casual assertions. I see the way she’s protecting herself from the heartache that scorned her not once, but twice.
“I just think it looks like you’re scared, Mom,” I say. “Like you’re hiding behind all these shallow relationships because you don’t want to get your heart broken again.”
Mom scoffs. “Well that’s quite a judgment coming from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
She gives me a pointed look. “I don’t see you settling down.”
I huff out a breath and reach for my mimosa, draining it in two long swallows. “Are you serious?” I say. “I’m only twenty-five. This is not the same thing.”
“Are you sure?” she shoots back. “I know a little more about relationships than you do, Sophie, and from where I’m standing, you’re the one hiding here. Not me.”
It’s not often that Mom uses her therapist voice on me, but that was it, and her words hit me harder than I expect.
She thinks I’m hiding? From what? And what does she know about my dating life? I’m actively trying to find someone, to settle down. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
“I heard from Dad,” I say, my words pointed and sharp. “That’s why I’m here.”
Mom tilts her head toward me. She’s still on her lounge chair, but her body language has completely shifted. “What?”
“I need to pick up the box of journals he gave me when I was in middle school.”
“His mother’s journals?” Mom asks. “But he gave those to you.”
“He did. But now Callie is working on a family history project at school, and he thinks she’d like to read them.”
Mom scoffs. “ Callie, huh? Is she his oldest?”
“Yeah,” I say. “She’s a freshman this year. Almost fifteen.”
“Wow,” Mom says, almost more to herself than to me. “Time goes by fast.” She sits up a little taller. “You know, those are your journals, Sophie. Your father can’t just pry a gift out of one daughter’s hands and give it to another. You can say no,” she says.
I fight to contain my sigh. I did say I wanted to needle her, but I clearly forgot how much her anger drains me. “It’s not a big deal, Mom. I haven’t looked at those journals in years.”
She purses her lips, her frustration clear on her face. “Well. Still,” she huffs. “I think it’s rude that he just expects?—”
“Knock, knock,” Peter says from behind me, and I sit up, spinning to face him, relief washing over me like a cool breeze. “Hey! You’re here.”
“Sorry for just letting myself in,” he says. “No one answered when I knocked, so I took a gamble and found the door unlocked.”
“I’m so glad you did,” Mom says, standing from her chair and moving toward Peter. Whatever anger she had simmering beneath the surface moments ago is completely gone now, but that doesn’t surprise me.
Mom will never pass up an opportunity to be beautiful and charming.
“Hi, Peter,” she says, pulling him into a hug. “How are you?”
“Good, Mrs. Stewart. It’s nice to see you.” He looks around the backyard. “You have a pool now.”
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” she says. “Want to swim? I still have a ton of Pierre’s clothes. I’m sure there’s some trunks you could borrow.”
Peter’s eyes dart to mine, and I do my best to communicate how much I don’t want that to happen. “Oh, um, that’s okay,” he says. “I think…Sophie and I actually have somewhere to be.”
I give him a quick thumbs up before my mother turns around to face me. “But you just got here.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just a…thing. It’s been scheduled a while,” I say. “But I’ll come back soon when I have more time.” I stand and move toward the patio doors. “I’m just going to go upstairs to find the journals.”
“I’ll come too,” Peter says, but my mother intercepts him.
“You’ll do no such thing,” she says. “You sit here and chat with me a while. Sophie can manage one small box on her own.”
Peter shoots me another look.
“I’ll be fast,” I say, and he nods.
The journals are exactly where I expect them to be. I open the box and pull the top one out, flipping through the first few pages. I read them all when I was younger, anxious to feel some connection to the paternal grandmother I would never know. She was a gardener, like me, and wrote a lot about her heirloom tomatoes and her prize-winning pumpkins. It didn’t mean a lot to me then, but I feel a sudden desire to read them again now. Maybe I will before I give them back to Dad.
Peter stands the minute I appear in the kitchen and lets himself in through the back door. “Ready to go?” he says, and I suddenly wonder what Mom said to make him so jumpy.
“Yeah,” I say. “You okay?”
“Good,” he says. “All good.”
I say goodbye to my mom, promising to text her so we can make plans to have lunch, then follow Peter out to his car.
“You sure everything is okay?” I say after I’ve dropped the box into the back seat and climbed in. “What did my mother say to you?”
He clears his throat. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Peter,” I say. “You clearly aren’t.”
His eyes dart to mine. “I am. It was just a lot of stuff about you and…me. How she wishes we would just date.”
“Oh. Well that’s—” My words cut off even as heat climbs my face. “Well that’s just silly.”
“Did you tell her I have a date tonight?” I say, though the tone of my voice is all wrong. It sounds artificial, even a little squeaky, like I’m trying really hard.
Peter’s jaw tenses. “I didn’t mention it,” he says without taking his eyes off the road. “But I guess I should have.”
Most of the time, when Mom asks about my dating life, she makes a joke about Peter being my backup plan, then volunteers to set me up with the son or the nephew or the distant second cousin of her latest conquest. It’s odd to know she was this pointed with Peter, if only because it’s a shift from the norm.
But then her earlier accusation pops into the front of my mind. You’re the one hiding here. Not me.
Hiding from what?
From a serious relationship? And then she turns around and tells Peter she thinks we should date.
There is truth buried somewhere in my fragmented thoughts. Some kernel of wisdom that I sense lurking, hiding just beyond reach, but I can’t grasp it. I can’t see it clearly.
But as I think about my dad living his life with his family, helping his daughter with her family history project or my mom, lounging by her pool or cruising the world with beautiful men, I do start to wonder.
What if the person most damaged by my parents’ divorce was me ?