Chapter 16
EMILY WAS SITTING AT her desk at the museum when her cell phone rang with an unfamiliar Los Angeles number. Emily briefly thought, Santa Monica. She hesitated a moment before answering.
“Emily, it’s me.” A woman’s voice came through her new smartphone, and Emily knew it sounded familiar. Her heart beat wildly in her chest for another moment before she placed it.
“Cara?” she said softly, suddenly wishing she hadn’t answered the phone, or that she had taken the time to transfer all her old flip phone contacts into her new iPhone.
“It’s been a while, huh?” Cara’s easy laugh breezed in through the phone, and Emily swallowed back the bile rising in her throat.
“What do you want?” she said.
Cara didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she said, “Can we meet?”
“I don’t live in Boston anymore,” Emily said quickly.
“Oh?” Cara sounded surprised. Emily resisted the urge to cry out that she hadn’t, in fact, lived in Boston in years! “So where are you right now?”
“I went to grad school in Florida and now I work at a museum down here. Tampa.” Emily realized she was giving away too much information.
Telling Cara things she didn’t need to know.
But it all popped out nonetheless. Then she repeated herself, trying to keep her voice stern: “What do you want, Cara?”
“I just wanted to see you before I move back to LA,” Cara said. Emily let that knowledge sink in for a moment. Cara was moving back to LA. She wondered how her mom’s health was but she couldn’t bring herself to ask. “I know what I did… was wrong,” Cara added.
“It was years ago,” Emily said brusquely. “Water under the bridge.” That wasn’t true. When she thought about the way Cara had just disappeared and started ignoring her, it still felt fresh enough to sting, like no time had passed.
Cara was silent on the other end of the line for a moment. Then she said, “Do you still go to San Diego every May with your sisters?”
Emily considered whether she should lie. But Cara had known her well enough for a brief period of time that she didn’t think lying about this would be believable. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
“I’ll be back in LA by then. I could drive down and meet you,” Cara said.
“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” Emily said.
“Are you with someone else?” Cara asked.
Emily suddenly thought about her boss, who was currently out on maternity leave, at home with her twins.
They’d talked on the phone every night this week.
Her boss said she was calling about work, but then no words had been exchanged about the museum.
“No,” Emily said. “I’m not with anyone else. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Of course not,” Cara said softly. “So how about you just let me buy you lunch then, in May?”
Julia’s BlackBerry buzzed on her desk, but knee-deep in preparing for her first hearing, she ignored it.
She had only very recently come back to work in family law part-time, in an effort to still be able to pick up Veronica from school at a reasonable hour each day and then be there to make her dinner too.
But a hearing, especially her first custody hearing, meant all bets were off.
Her BlackBerry buzzed again, and she finally grabbed it if only to make it stop. Shoot. Veronica’s school. She quickly answered the call and the school nurse promptly informed her that Veronica had thrown up, just after lunch, and needed to be picked up. Julia said she would be right over.
Ted had been supportive about her going back to work, encouraging even, about her new desire to focus on custody cases, but still, he’d never quite offered to pick up any of the slack at home.
Not that Julia had asked him to either. In her own mind, working part-time meant she could still be a full-time mother to Veronica like she wanted.
But now, today, she had this hearing to prep for. He’d said at breakfast he had an easy day, a golf outing with a client in the afternoon. He could probably leave that now to get Veronica at school.
She called him but he sent her straight to voicemail, and Julia sighed.
She considered trying him again, knowing he would pick up if he suspected a true emergency.
She knew he cared, even if his work often seemingly came first. But things had felt strained between them in this new reality where they were no longer trying for a baby.
It wasn’t Ted’s fault—he’d tried to initiate sex a few times in the first few months after the last miscarriage, and she’d pushed him away, not ready.
But by the time she maybe was ready again last year, he’d stopped trying.
And she’d felt too shy to initiate things with him.
Recently they’d fallen into a place where it felt like they swept by each other rather than toward each other.
Her phone buzzed with a text: Everything okay? I have bad signal and just saw I missed your call.
Yeah. V threw up at school and the nurse called me. One of us has to pick her up.
Oh god, vomiting
When she’d had terrible morning sickness, Ted had sometimes thrown up right along with her. That’s how sensitive he was to puke. Hopefully just something she ate, Julia texted back.
Do you want me to go get her? Ted texted. I know you have a busy afternoon.
She hesitated before she responded, having a rush of mom guilt, suddenly picturing her poor baby feeling sick.
What if Ted felt too sick himself to rub her back, or hold a cool washcloth to her forehead?
Or clean her up if she needed him to? No.
I’ll figure it out. I just wanted to let you know what was going on.
Are you sure? Ted asked.
Yeah, I can go get her and then I’ll work at home with her. How exactly that was going to work, she wasn’t sure, but first hearing be damned. She couldn’t let V down. She would figure it out. She always did.
And then she grabbed her purse and her jacket and she ran out the door.
Nora cursed as she dropped her flip phone running up the steps of the Union Square subway station on her way to an audition.
The back of the top half of the phone popped off, and she ducked into Duane Reade to buy duct tape to reattach it.
She hastily taped and walked with purpose toward the tiny theater on Thirteenth Street, hoping this wasn’t some sort of pre-audition bad omen.
It wasn’t bird poop on her head, she told herself.
It wasn’t spraining her ankle running for the train (as she had stupidly done six months ago).
Still, since her role as Juliet two years ago, she’d had only dribs and drabs of real theater work.
This audition was the best shot she’d had in a while.
She’d most recently been earning money giving voice lessons to middle and high school students.
It was better than waitressing, and it was (mostly) paying her bills along with her supplemental income from the Coronado rental.
It had only taken her mentioning music lessons for Dad to suggest maybe returning to college for a music education degree.
She’d told him she’d think about it, but even rehashing it in her mind now, again, felt like giving up.
She often clung to the words that Nate had said to her once on a sailboat just off Coronado years ago: Anything worth having takes a lot of hard work.
And you can’t give up on your dream, Nora.
Still, she was only one year shy of thirty now, and she knew she couldn’t keep doing this hustle for work forever.
If enough time passed, she’d quite simply be too old to get her big break.
She pushed that thought aside, shoved her taped-up phone in her purse, and entered the theater.
She was auditioning for a small off-Broadway revival of a little-known Barbra Streisand role from the sixties.
It would be a perfect fit and would’ve been a dream role in Grandma Vera’s eyes—something that gave her just the littlest bit of hope as she pushed on the glass door and walked inside. Nearly running right into Leo.
“Nora.” He caught her elbows, righting her so she didn’t trip, and stared at her for a moment.
It had been a few years since they’d seen each other, or even talked for that matter.
Their last communication was a voicemail he’d left her the May week she was in Coronado with her sisters, just after Nate and Becca had broken off their engagement.
Spending that week with Nate had somehow refocused her to want more, to expect more from any man she would be spending time with.
And she’d never returned his call upon getting back to New York.
Well, shit, was he the producer her new agent, Stella, had mentioned, who’d asked if she’d come in to audition?
She cleared her throat. “Leo!” She forced enthusiasm. “Gosh, it’s been a minute. You look… great.”
Annoyingly, he did, in fact, look great.
Aging agreed with him, the way it seemed that age could only agree with men.
The tiniest threads of gray running through his beard, peppering his thick, wavy brown hair, made him look distinguished, kind.
Smart. Nora had thus far in her life found one gray hair in her own scalp, freaked out, and promptly plucked it out.
That’s all she needed, to go gray early.
Leo smiled at her now, and she felt something ping in her chest, remembering how he’d always made her feel good about herself. “You look great too,” he said. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been good,” she lied. “You know, getting by. Still trying for that big break.”
“I’m so glad you made it in to read today. I thought you would be the perfect Miss Marmelstein.”
So he was the producer who’d called her agent. She bit her lip, wondering if he’d brought her here because he’d missed her. He let go of her and she noticed, as he lowered his arms, that he wore the thick gold band on his ring finger. Still married.