Chapter 10
Present Day
I wake to something warm squirming at my feet. She burrows up from the foot of the bed, tunneling her way to my side. Hallie’s
skin on mine, the knees and elbows she accidentally jabs into my flesh, feel so familiar they’re almost part of me. It’s our
weekend routine. Once she grows tired of playing in her room and her tummy begins to grumble, she climbs into bed beside me
and asks, “Mama, you ready to start a wonderful day together?”
If I were to be honest with her, I might not always say yes. I’m not always up for another day. Not recently. My bed is the
place that seems safest in light of all the things that have gone wrong in the real world. But for Hallie, if she exists in
this world, then at her request, each and every morning, I will climb out from under the cover of my comforter that begs me
to stay. I’ll give her my best shot.
I roll over and tuck an arm around her. The crook of my arm touches something satin. “What’s that?” I murmur, my voice still
thick from sleep.
“My cape.” Obviously goes unsaid.
Hallie has a flair for fashion that has bled into costumes. And accessories. And costume jewelry. And stealing her mother’s makeup. Innocent sharing my own mother would have shut down with a swift iron fist.
“Silly me.” I smile as I push my face into her auburn hair and breathe it in.
“Pancakes today?” Hallie asks.
I don’t dare to tell her, but nestled here beside me with her angel-soft skin, with her silky hair tickling my nose, with
her heart beating so close to mine, there’s very little I could refuse her.
“Let’s go extra special and add chocolate chips,” I say.
With that, Hallie flips upright and ejects herself from the bed. She charges toward the kitchen, not looking back, and it
is answer enough to my suggestion.
The familiar clang of pancake-making supplies being pulled from drawers and cabinets downstairs follows, and the sound is
the final encouragement I need to put my feet on the ground. Even if I could use some extra sleep after that house tour with
Magnolia yesterday.
Soon I’m ladling circles of batter onto a sizzling griddle as Hallie works on finishing the puzzle we started last night.
We curl up on the sofa and eat stacks of chocolate-oozing pancakes in silence, and in a flash, they’re nothing but crumbs.
Adding chocolate chips, eating on the couch, wearing pajamas past 9:00 a.m.—all are Magnolia unapproved, which is why I so
intentionally include them in my own daughter’s life.
An hour later, Hallie sits on an accent chair in the front sitting room, peeking through the slats of the shuttered windows,
looking for her father’s car. He’s twenty minutes late and hasn’t bothered to call or text. It’s another item to add to my
Grady Grievances List.
When he finally pulls into the driveway a full thirty minutes late, Hallie hops up, and I follow her outside.
“She ate a great breakfast and is ready for y’all’s day,” I tell him.
Grady bends and wraps Hallie in a hug.
“What’re we doing today, Daddy?” she asks excitedly.
“What do you think about riding around in a golf cart today? Being my extra-special caddy?”
Despite Grady’s efforts, Hallie deflates, and her gaze drops.
“Hang on, is she actually playing?” Only once I’ve said it do I realize I shouldn’t have. Grady turns to scowl at me.
“Does it matter?” he snaps. “On my days, I— as her father —get to pick what we do.” He turns and marches around his car. “Hallie, in the back. Now.”
I want to be angry. But as I watch my disappointed little girl slide into the back seat, destined for a day of tagging along
as he sips beer, all I feel is helpless. I stand in the driveway and Grady pulls out too fast. Desperate, it seems, to put
space between him and his overstepping ex.
The truth of it hurts—that this really is what we’ve become. I know we weren’t always like this, but I didn’t see it change.
Aren’t things supposed to change over the years, as the rest of life does? I thought we were good enough to navigate change
and make do.
Make do , how sad.
I turn and start walking back to the house. The rumble of a truck passes behind me, and when I glance back, a moving truck
goes by—for the house next door, most likely.
I continue inside but hang near the front windows, hoping for a peek at the new neighbors. The truck stops and a uniformed
moving crew spills out. The new neighbor exits the house and approaches the moving truck. He greets the mover with a smile
and a handshake, then stops and waits alongside him. Something about him reminds me of something familiar I can’t quite pin
down.
Still, I don’t want to miss the chance for an introduction, and I do need to check the mail. So I slip on my flip-flops and push out the door.
About halfway down the driveway, I wonder if cornering the neighbors on their moving day is a bit much. Objectively, there
are still things being pulled from the truck. But I’m already halfway there, and if they caught sight of me turning and taking
off running, I’d most certainly brand myself the crazy neighbor forevermore.
The new neighbor stands facing the street when I arrive at the curb.
I rattle my mailbox as I pull the envelopes from it—perhaps a hair too theatrically—but as I’d hoped, he turns.
I squint as our eyes meet—and time slows.
Or rewinds.
My insides lurch and the mail in my hand cascades to the ground like a paper waterfall as if I’ve lost control of myself,
and all I can do is stand there and watch this train tear off down the rails.
“Mack?” The same dimple folds at the corner of his mouth, right where it’s always lived.
“You?” My heart quickens into thuds that rattle my chest.
It’s no wonder the sight of him, even from a distance, reminded me of before. Lincoln Kelly is before. The distance between us, measurably only a few steps, is a massive gulf and nothing all at once.
“What are—? Do you live right—?” he asks, pointing to my home.
“No,” I announce right at him, and I say it about him. About his being here in the middle of my life. He made his choice,
and his choice was to leave. Not only is this my territory, but it’s been my neighborhood for the last decade. He’s an interloper,
and there isn’t another way around it.
And yet, he just stands there, perfectly blasé about invading my safe bubble, dragging all the sore memories behind him.
“Oh good,” he says. “That could’ve been—”
“Well, actually, I was saying no about—never mind. Yes. I do live right there.”
I wait for him to tell me more, for him to explain himself. Defend himself, really. To make any good and decent argument as
to why he gets to come back here after he walked out with such assurance all those years ago.
This place wasn’t what he wanted.
I wasn’t what he wanted.
Yet now it seems we share a very similar taste in real estate.
“Well, that’s me.” Lincoln points to his new home, the one built on a permanent foundation right beside mine.
“No, this can’t be right,” I say.
He rubs his head. “Uh, looks like it is.”
A flash of worry crosses his eyes, and it’s the first sign that looks something like an admission. Maybe he’s calculating
the cost of another immediate move. His front door rattles and swings open, and Lincoln’s brow creases as his gaze goes there.
From the door a miniature version of Lincoln calls over, “Dad, I need help over here!”
My eyes go wide.
Lincoln squeezes a tight smile, his gaze back on me. “That’s my son. Foster.”
His son. He’s right there, in an actual human body, more of Lincoln in this world. Foster’s hair is dark and thick and dips in unruly
waves and curls, and he points to the oversize box of toys he plans to lug into the house with his father’s help. I feel the
self-righteousness drain from me as I watch his son struggle with the box. It’s hard to stay indignant in the face of children.
Especially ones who look right around Hallie’s age.
I glance at Lincoln’s ring finger. It’s empty. My heart double-skips, and my body lights up in a way I thought it had forgotten
how to do. I tug at my shirt hem, hoping it’ll send the calm down message across me.
“Well, welcome, I guess,” I say with an awkward chuckle.
A mover descends the back steps of the truck with several large-scale photo frames in hand. Black and white, classic and captivating,
everything I once knew of Lincoln’s photography, the stuff that turns bodies and places into songs and stories. I’ll never
tell him, but I’ve wanted to put his art in so many of my clients’ homes over the years. His style is seared on my mind like
an ugly scar refusing to budge from my mental list of design choices. And despite my relentless search for alternative art—and
perhaps therein proof of the richness of a life without him—I’ve struggled to find anything else that compares.
“Yours?” I ask.
He nods.
“Still incredible,” I say.
“Thanks.” He turns and looks at the houses. “And look, I had no idea. I thought I was doing a good job of leaving you alone—just like you asked for. I never would’ve bought the house had
I known.”
“It’ll be all right.” I shrug, and it feels desperately inadequate. I’m not sure I believe it myself, not right this moment,
but I’m not sure what else I can say.
“I promise I’ll stay out of your hair,” Lincoln says. “But I should go help Foster with the box before he throws his back
out.”
He takes off up the driveway. Two movers grasp the ends of a clothing rack, drawing it out of the truck. The hangers on it slide toward the short, balding mover as he leads it backward down the ramp. The sound of the metal hooks slipping is like a blade cutting.
The sight is a cut as well. Because the clothing isn’t Lincoln’s or Foster’s. It is patterned and sequined. Dresses. It’s
women’s clothing, and it belongs to his wife, his partner, his love . Their things are mixed together in this truck. Their lives are wound together, the same.
I try to convince myself that this is ok, that the thought of this man with someone else is ok. Maybe this is my nudge from
fate that it’s my time to sell. That I need a real fresh start of my own—perhaps even a true beach cottage now that I’m a single woman.
But still, as I turn and head back up my own driveway, I can’t deny the way it stings, the way my freshly puffed-up heart
withers. I can’t deny that the thought of him with anyone else hurts.
That maybe it always will.