Chapter 4
“Mom.”
At the sound of Kendra’s voice, Mary jerked awake. Her head pounded and her mouth felt as if she’d swallowed a bucket of sand. Downstairs, the front door banged shut. Mary squinted at the clock. The red numbers blurred together. She blinked and looked again. 10:07. She wondered how she’d managed to sleep through Dean showering and leaving for his golf tournament on the Cape.
Quick footsteps climbed the stairs. Mary sat up, resting her back against the headboard.
“Mom?” Kendra, her lips curling downward at the corners, stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching her. “Are you sick?”
“Why are you here so early?” They had plans to walk the bike path together at noon.
“I’m a half hour late.”
Mary reached for her glasses on the nightstand and looked at the clock again: 12:27. “Oh, my!” She giggled. She hadn’t slept this late since her college days. Her internal clock had reset itself as she’d aged. Each year, she woke up thirty minutes earlier than the year before. These days, she was usually up before seven.
Kendra crossed the room and plunked down on the edge of the bed. “You look kind of green.”
“I had a little too much to drink last night. Captain Morgan and Coke.” Mary raised her chin, hoping her daughter was impressed. See? Your mom is not such an old fuddy-duddy.
Kendra’s dark eyebrows shot upward. “You’re hungover? And since when do you drink rum and Cokes?”
Mary smoothed the bunched-up blanket. “When I was your age, it was my signature drink.”
“Signature drink?” Kendra wrinkled her nose. “Who are you, and what have you done with my mother?”
“I saw James in concert. After the show, we went to a trendy bar in the heart of the city. I didn’t get home until three in the morning.” She felt strangely proud of this, as if staying out late proved she could still keep up with the young crowd.
“Dad stayed out that late?”
The mention of Dean sucked all the joy out of the moment. No doubt if he’d been at the show last night, he wouldn’t have wanted to go out after, and he would have made them all leave before James had played his last song so they wouldn’t get stuck in a slow line leaving the parking garage.
“Your father refused to come. He had to wake up early for golf.”
“Are you too tired to walk?” Kendra retied her long, dark ponytail as she spoke. “We can do something another day.”
Mary shook her head. The slight movement made her woozy. “No way.” After Kendra had graduated from college and moved into an apartment in Boston, Mary had imagined her daughter coming home every Wednesday night to do her laundry and have dinner. She pictured meeting Kendra on rainy weekends at the old movie theater in West Newton, and she was certain she and Dean would drive into the South End on Sunday mornings in the winter to take Kendra to brunch. In the two years since Kendra had moved to the city, none of that had happened. Instead, Mary could count on one hand the number of times her daughter had come home to visit. While Kendra would make time to play a round of golf with Dean, whenever Mary asked her to do something, she was busy.
“Give me a few minutes to get dressed,” Mary said. She was eager to find out why her daughter had invited her to go for a walk today.
After Mary dressed, she found Kendra in the backyard practicing her putting. Kendra was six years old when Dean taught her how to golf. Mary was glad their daughter had taken to the sport because Dean finally stopped pestering her to learn how to play. Over the years, though, she’d sometimes felt left out when Dean and Kendra spent long afternoons together at the club or rehashed highlights from their eighteen holes at the dinner table.
Now as Mary stood on the porch watching Kendra make putt after putt, her eyes watered in the bright sun, so she went back inside to retrieve her sunglasses. They were on the bench in the breezeway next to Dean’s battered royal blue baseball hat, the “good luck cap,” as he called it. Kendra had given it to him years ago for Father’s Day. Since then, he’d worn it to every tournament he played in. He must have forgotten it today, because there was no way he would have intentionally left it behind. Mary sometimes wondered if Dean loved golf more than he loved her, but she had no doubt he loved Kendra more than anything else in the world. She couldn’t have picked a better father for their daughter, and seeing the sweet way he treated Kendra had made her love him even more than she had at the start of their marriage.
On the rail trail, Mary and Kendra set out at a fast pace, weaving their way around other walkers. Occasionally, bikers or runners would shout “On your left!” as they passed.
“You should have seen how James got mobbed at the bar,” Mary said. “And he was so gracious, posing for photo after photo.”
“Were they all middle-aged women like you, reliving their youth?” Kendra teased.
Reliving their youth. Mary pictured the throngs of women like herself packed into the theater. Were the ninety minutes they’d spent singing, dancing, and screaming out how much they loved James a way to revisit their heyday? Did they all miss their younger days as much as she did? If only Darbi’s crazy story were true, she would go back to being twenty-four again right now. “If you could redo a part of your life, would you?” she asked.
“No way,” Kendra said. “The best is yet to come.”
Mary missed believing the best was still in front of her. Kendra had so much to look forward to—building her career, getting married, having children. Every day she lived with the excitement of wondering how her life would turn out. She had plenty of possibilities. Mary, on the other hand, had no possibilities. She knew exactly how her life had turned out. Not at all as she’d planned. If everything had gone how she’d wanted it to, she’d be on the cover of that magazine, not Liz.
“Speaking of ‘the best is yet to come,’” Kendra said, “I have some exciting news, but I’m afraid of how you’re going to react.”
“Oh my God, you’re pregnant.” Mary would have preferred Kendra to be married before having kids, but her daughter did seem to be in love with her current beau, Nate. They would figure it out. She tried to imagine herself holding her grandchild. Her neck stiffened. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that. Not yet. It would mean she was old enough to be a grandmother. A grandmother!
Kendra laughed. “I’m definitely not pregnant, Mom.”
“Whew.” Mary relaxed. “Then what’s the news?”
“The ad agency is opening a new branch. They asked me to manage it.”
“Oh, honey, that’s wonderful. Congratulations.” Mary wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her closer. “Why would you be worried about how I would react to that?”
Kendra swallowed hard. “The job’s in London.”
Mary’s stomach roiled. She swore she could hear all those drinks from the night before sloshing around down there.
“It’s a great opportunity. A lot more money.”
“You’re moving to England?” Kendra lived only a little more than thirty minutes away now, and Mary rarely saw her. If she moved overseas, they would never see each other.
“I’ll be a plane ride away. Dad’s already planning a trip. He wants to spend time in Ireland too. There are a bunch of courses he wants to play there.”
“Your father knows about this?” Mary’s skin prickled as she imagined Kendra telling Dean as they drove around the golf course in one of those silly little carts.
Kendra’s cheeks reddened. “I told him last weekend at the club.”
“He’s known for a week?”
Kendra licked her lips.
A young dad with a baby strapped to his chest and holding his wife’s hand approached from the other direction. The man and woman both smiled at Mary. She watched them until they’d passed by. “What about Nate? I thought you really liked him.”
“He encouraged me to apply.”
Of course he did, Mary thought, remembering Nate telling her his parents were originally from the London area, Tottenham. Nate’s mother and younger sister had moved back a few years ago, after his father’s death. How could she have forgotten? Well, maybe because with his blond hair and blue eyes, Nate reminded her of the traditional all-American boy next door. “He’s moving back and asked you to go with him. That’s why you applied for the job.”
“I love him, Mom.”
“When are you leaving?”
“June tenth.”
Mary felt her body go rigid. “That’s next week.”
Kendra placed a hand on Mary’s shoulder but didn’t say anything else.
“Let’s turn around. I’m not feeling well.” Mary reversed direction without waiting for Kendra, walking at twice the speed she had on the way out. Kendra was moving to London. No doubt she’d marry Nate. They’d have beautiful children together, whom they would raise in Bexley or Chiswick or some other posh London suburb. Mary’s grandchildren would have proper British accents. She would never see them. They wouldn’t know her. A moment before, she’d wanted no part of being a grandmother, but now she mourned not being able to spend time with her adorable imaginary grandchildren with the English accents.
Mary and Kendra walked in silence until they reached the top of the stairs to the deck in Mary’s backyard. “Do you not want me to go?” Kendra asked.
Mary froze. No, I do not want you to go. Her throat burned the way it always did before she cried. She looked up at the cloudless sky. If she told Kendra to stay, her daughter would end up resenting her. Besides, Mary knew what it was like to give up your dream, so she’d always encouraged her daughter to follow hers. She couldn’t stop now, no matter how much it would hurt not to have Kendra nearby. She couldn’t be that selfish. She swallowed hard. “I want you to be happy.”
Kendra embraced her mother. Mary clung to her tightly, wishing she could hold on forever.
From the living room where she was watching television, Mary heard the garage door rumble open. She ran to the breezeway. Dean slunk in. After a day in the sun, his face and arms were a bronzy gold.
Mary watched him with her hand on her hip.
He yawned and stretched. “I played like crap today.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about Kendra.”
He turned his back to her to hang his fob on the wall hook.
She fought the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “You’ve known for a week.” His not telling her made her feel like an outsider in her own family. Did he and Kendra have other secrets?
Dean let out a deep breath and turned toward her again. He picked up his baseball cap from the bench. “Realized I didn’t have this with me right after I got on the highway. I should have circled back to get it. I played awful without it.”
“How could you not tell me?”
“I had to take a provisional off the first tee.” He shook his head. “Knew it would be a long day after that.”
Mary ripped the hat from his hands and flung it toward the bench. “Our daughter is moving to London.”
Dean watched his hat sail through the air with a shocked expression. He exhaled loudly and softened his voice. “She asked me not to tell you. Swear to God.” Using his index finger, he drew a cross over his heart after he spoke, something he always did when he said the word “God.” “She knew you’d be upset and wanted to talk to you about it herself.”
“Why would she think I’d be upset?”
Dean raised an eyebrow.
Well, of course she was upset. What mother wouldn’t be? “Did you try to talk her out of it?”
He scrubbed his hand over his jaw. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and Mary noticed several gray hairs mixed in with the dark ones.
“Of course not. It’s a great opportunity.”
A great opportunity. A flash of pain streaked through Mary’s mouth so sharp that she flinched.
Dean stepped toward her. “Are you okay?”
As quickly as the pain had come, it subsided, and she dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “She’s moving there because of Nate, not the job. She admitted as much to me.”
Dean nodded.
Something about the casualness of his gesture irked her, as if it were no big deal that their daughter was willing to uproot her life and move to another country, another continent, for Nate, a boy she’d known for only a few months. Mary’s dissatisfaction with Dean had boiled into anger, and now she understood the root cause of that anger. It wasn’t because he’d skipped dinner to practice putting. It wasn’t because he’d stood her up for James’s show. It wasn’t even because he hadn’t told her about Kendra’s plans to move. Darbi had stirred those old feelings of resentment Mary had tamped down long ago, when Dean refused to go to Iowa with her. There was no reason he didn’t go other than he didn’t love her enough.
“You refused to come to Iowa.”
Dean blinked and stared at her with a confused expression.
“You wouldn’t move to Iowa with me.” She said it louder this time, and her voice broke.
“What’s in Iowa?”
She gasped and her hand flew to her chest. “My. Great. Opportunity.”
“What are you talking about?”
Mary’s nostrils flared. She bared her teeth. How could he not remember that she’d sacrificed her career for him? “I could be America’s most trusted newscaster.”
Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re talking about the broadcasting job in that rinky-dink town in the middle of nowhere?”
“The CBS affiliate.”
“You turned it down because you didn’t want to move away from your family and friends.”
“I said no because of you.”
“I encouraged you to take the job.”
“But you wouldn’t come with me.”
“You never asked.”
“You knew I wanted you to come.”
The cords in Dean’s neck bulged. “Why are we talking about this now? It was so long ago.”
“Because Liz took the job, and now look at her.”
Dean’s eyes widened, and he slowly shook his head. “You think you’d have Liz’s job today if you took that job?” He spoke much slower than usual.
Mary balled her hands into tight fists. “I’m better than her. That’s why they offered the job to me first.”
Dean put up his hand. “You were better than her at the time, but Liz has improved through the years.” He yawned, his mouth hanging open for several seconds. “I’m too tired to talk about this now.” He squeezed her shoulder as he passed her on the way to the stairs. A few minutes later the shower came on.
Mary’s wisdom teeth throbbed. Her heart raced. She took long deep breaths to try to calm down. If only Darbi’s story were true. She’d go back and do it over again. She’d show him she was still better than Liz.