Chapter 26
HOW’S THERAPY GOING?” CECILE asked Emily in the beginning of January.
It had been months since Cecile had gently pushed her therapist’s business card into Emily’s hand, and Emily had promised she would make an appointment.
Last fall, she’d even lied and told Cecile she’d started going weekly, but the truth was, she’d never even called to schedule something.
She didn’t want to go to therapy. She didn’t need therapy.
She was doing just fine. Better than fine.
“It’s good,” Emily lied again. “Great!”
Cecile grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Good. Because I think we should get married.”
“What?” Emily leaned against the back of her couch to keep her balance, totally caught off guard by the not-quite proposal.
Cecile nodded quickly. “It’s newly legal again in Florida. And I think we should do it before they can reverse it. What if, God forbid, something were to happen to one of us. I want the legal protections marriage could provide us.”
Emily frowned.
“And of course, most important of all. You know how much I love you, Em. I want to marry you!”
“But the boys…” Emily murmured. This was exactly the reason why Cecile had suggested therapy in the first place.
“The boys love you too!” Cecile said, immediately considering their perspective, forgetting all about Emily’s worries.
Emily nodded. Sure, maybe Mikey and Jim did like her, but in that way you might like your fun, unmarried aunt who brought you gifts every time you saw her.
It wasn’t the same thing as becoming a permanent fixture in their daily lives, their stepmother.
Cecile had the boys every other weekend and most nights of the week, and both Christmas and fall break last year.
She and Emily had taken them to New York City for fall break to see Nora’s show, then to Disney World for Christmas.
There were now framed pictures sitting on Emily’s mantel of the four of them in Times Square, and then another of the four of them with Mickey and Minnie.
Cecile pointed to those pictures for emphasis right now: proof that they could actually be a real family.
Emily felt something rattling deep inside her chest. But she wasn’t sure if it was joy or terror.
As a little girl she had never imagined some elaborate future wedding the way Nora and Julia had.
She’d had trouble envisioning even dating someone until she’d gotten to college.
But she loved Cecile more than she had ever loved anyone—she knew that much for sure.
“If you don’t want to,” Cecile continued, her voice quivering in a way that made Emily’s heart clench. “I understand.”
The thing was, Emily suddenly realized she did want to, and maybe that was the thought that terrified her most of all. “Yes,” she finally said. “Yes, Cee! Let’s get married.”
Since Hera had opened on Broadway, Nora had been indulging in retail therapy.
Half the road to fake it till you make it was, Nora decided, dressing the part.
And running up her credit card balance on Fifth Avenue wasn’t quite as bad as it used to be.
She had money coming in from the show now, and she’d split the proceeds from the sale of Dad’s house in Chicago, as well as his remaining IRA balance, with her sisters.
A few hundred thousand that she should’ve kept as a nest egg or invested wisely like Dad had told her to do.
But what she needed right now was to look good and to keep on moving up.
Never mind that Emily said she wanted to use the money for a house after she and Cecile got married.
And Julia said it would cover Veronica’s college costs. Nora had only herself to worry about.
Still, it hit Nora when she was in Coronado with her sisters that maybe money, designer clothes, and a dream role on Broadway somehow weren’t enough to make her truly happy.
Across the table, on their last night in Coronado, Emily looked like she was practically radiating joy.
Her normally stoic features appeared softened; her face was downright glowing.
This was the effect Cecile had on her—and maybe she had also gotten too much sun this week?
Either way, Nora could never figure out how to make herself look like she glowed from within, no matter how much money she spent on facials and makeup.
“I can’t believe I’m the last one of us to get married,” Nora said after they did their annual last-night cheers, toasting to another successful sisters’ week and to Emily’s upcoming nuptials.
“Believe it, bitch,” Emily said with a small cackle before she took a sip of wine.
The three sisters were sharing a bottle of Pinot Noir at their annual last-night dinner at the restaurant in the old boathouse on Glorietta Bay, which was now the Bluewater Boathouse.
The restaurant ownership had changed several times since the Mays had been coming to the island, but the beauty of the location had not.
As they sat out on the deck, a cool breeze flitted off the bay beside them.
Sharing a bottle of wine, here, with her sisters, Nora always thought that if her life had one perfect night each year, it was this one.
Nora took another sip of her wine and turned to her oldest sister. “Julia,” she said. “You’re the old married lady here. You should give Emily some advice.”
“Old?” Julia protested.
“Yeah, like remember when you texted us about your mammogram last month? Old,” Nora emphasized.
Emily chuckled into her wine. Julia had sent a very detailed text into their sisters’ chat about said mammogram.
“It’s very important to get screened after forty, Nora. Mom wasn’t around at my age for us to know what our family history might be.”
“Okay, okay, I know.” Nora smirked. “In another five years I’ll worry about that. So go on, give Emily your best marriage advice.”
Julia made a face, buttered a piece of bread, then used a napkin to delicately wipe her hands. “Always tell the truth, Em,” she finally said.
Emily frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean. That’s the number one rule of making a marriage work in my opinion. Just… be honest.”
“I am honest,” Emily said.
“The lady doth protest too much methinks.” Nora chuckled and took another sip of wine. Emily shot her a look.
Julia was on a roll now and kept on talking: “The second you stop telling the truth, that’s when it’s over.”
“Everything all right with you and Ted?” Nora asked.
Julia forced a smile. “Of course! I’m saying this from my decades of experience as a family law attorney, not as an old married lady.”
“I was just teasing,” Nora said. “You might be old, but you’re still super hot. Some dude was totally checking you out yesterday on the beach.”
“Oh my God, no one was doing that, stop.” Julia’s cheeks instantly turned red and she put her hands over her face. “I have a teenage daughter for heaven’s sake.”
Nora shrugged and smiled. It was always fun to tease Julia, but she was also telling the truth. “I’m just saying, Jul, your skin is flawless and your boobs still look great. Who cares about honesty. Ted probably can’t keep his hands off you with that hot bod.”
“Nora!” Julia protested.
“And that would be my marriage advice, Em,” Nora continued. “Stay hot for as long as you can.”
“Wow, Nora, that’s so deep.” Emily rolled her eyes. “It’s no wonder that you’re the last one of us to get married.”
The truth was, Julia shouldn’t have been giving anyone marriage advice.
Her own marriage hadn’t been in a good place for a while.
Maybe not since that point in Julia’s life when her body, her perception of family and motherhood, had fractured nine years earlier.
Maybe then it had started as a hairline crack between her and Ted, until over time and space it had bloomed into a full-blown break.
But the marriage counseling they’d been going to for the last year was something Julia hadn’t mentioned to anyone.
Not her coworkers, not her sisters, and certainly not Veronica.
The idea of counseling itself felt like an admission of some kind of grievous failure.
But worse was the fact they’d been going so damn long, and deep down she felt she was still losing control.
Of her truth. Of her marriage. Of Ted. Of herself.
The truth was, she had started going to Zumba classes on her lunch hour because exercising was the only thing that eased that crushing sense of being so out of control. Nora wasn’t completely wrong—Julia was actually in the best shape she’d been in in years.
Julia and Ted sat in the therapist’s waiting room one humid Friday afternoon in July, six weeks after Julia had returned from Coronado and had given Emily that ingenious advice. She hoped her sister’s marriage, years down the road, would be in better shape than her own.
She glanced at Ted now—he looked annoyed, probably about leaving work early, as he was fervently checking his phone.
Julia turned to her own phone, remembering the promise she’d made to Veronica that she would take her shopping for a dress for Emily’s wedding this weekend.
She hoped they could make it through the endeavor without having a huge argument over what constituted an appropriate dress.
She started scanning through the juniors’ section online at Nordstrom, wondering if she should preselect ones for Veronica to try that weren’t egregiously short. (No small task.)
And then, suddenly, Ted turned to her, touched her gently on the arm, in a way he hadn’t touched her in a long time. The feel of his fingers on her arm like that made her jump. “Let’s stop paying for this bullshit and make a deal,” he said.
She looked up from her phone. Looked at her husband. He looked strange. Not quite put together. His collar was unbuttoned and he’d loosened his tie. His brown eyes were watery, and his expression looked defeated.
“I mean, why are we still doing this?” Ted said with an air of frustration. “Why are we even here?”