Chapter Three Georgia
Miss or Mrs. Anderson?” Phoebe’s giggle bubbles out through my laptop’s speaker, nipping at the end of her question.
We’re video calling as I sit at my kitchen counter, marking Friday’s quizzes from my grade ten class.
Phoebe is drinking a hefty glass of white wine and reviewing my emails with Callum.
“Okay, so, this guy is madly in love with you,” she says dryly.
“Should we go wedding dress shopping or?”
I laugh, looking up to the ceiling of my apartment before I write another great work in red pen on yet another paper.
“Yeah, I think so! It’s happening fast but—” I lick my lips before puckering them, staring off into space.
“What do you think about a quintessential British, Anglican ceremony in his hometown and then a party here?”
We’re joking, obviously, but what is distinctly not funny are the butterflies that continue to do somersaults around my stomach whenever I get an email notification. It’s been a long time since I had a crush, which this is quickly evolving into.
My university boyfriend, Kyle, was . . .
fine? Present and accounted for? He was often considerate and not terrible in bed.
Kyle and I bonded over our love for the Victorian era and deep hatred of our comms class, but honestly, we didn’t have much else in common, and our love story fizzled out before teachers college.
I’ve dated a few guys since, but no one that’s stuck.
None of them looked like Callum. Nobody actually looks like Callum, I’m sure.
Callum can’t even look as good as he does in that photo he sent.
“He’s a doctor, G. He can afford two weddings,” Phoebe replies, smirking. “Send me the photos, I want to see these dimples you speak of!”
“Okay, but then you have to help me craft an equally charming reply.” I pick up my phone off the counter, forward the two photos Callum had sent along with his email, and keenly wait for Phoebe’s reaction.
She takes a long sip of wine, reaching for her phone as it chimes. Her eyes widen, and she sputters a cough, then sets her glass down on the table in front of her.
I smile boastfully, as if Callum’s good looks are something I ought to be proud of. “Yeah, I know. It’s ridiculous.”
“That’s one word for it.” She looks between her laptop and the phone in her hand. “He looks like a British Clark Kent!”
“I know . . .” I sigh.
In the photo, Callum is standing alone in front of an old, weathered stone wall with greenery growing over it.
He’s wearing a brown knitted sweater tucked into loose-fitting grey trousers.
His hands are in his pockets as he poses unassuredly, smiling softly at the camera, but looking more so at the person standing behind it with a glint of humour behind his eyes, which appear brown in this photo but seemed more hazel in the other he’d sent over.
He has white skin, chestnut curls trimmed to a perfect length, and a five-o’clock shadow.
I can’t justify why I think this, but I get the sense that he would smell of sun-doused libraries with old oak floors and leather-bound editions kept in pristine condition.
His smile, the subtle cheekiness of it, lodged itself into the back of my memory in a way that seemed to blur time.
I saw the photo for the first time today, and yet it feels far more familiar to me than that, like a memory I can’t quite place.
He’s got an old-school sort of charm, a boyish yet angular face with some sort of gravitational pull.
“Who’s this?” Rhett, my brother-in-law, comes into the frame, smiling as he leans over my sister’s shoulder. “Are you back on the dating apps, G?”
“No, this is so much better,” Phoebe answers for me. “This is Callum, the guy she’s emailing with about Bonnie’s time capsule. The other grandkid.”
Rhett studies the photo in awe. “Damn . . . If his grandma was half as good looking, then—”
“Nope,” Phoebe and I say in tandem, cutting Rhett off. Phoebe shakes her head at him, making her disgust obvious.
“Oh, whatever,” Rhett says, swiping Phoebe’s wineglass.
“He asked her at the end of his last email if she was single,” Phoebe says, waggling her eyes at her husband suggestively while he takes a drink. “He took one look at her sexy little headshot on her school’s website and said, I want some of that.”
“Okay, relax,” I say, laughing. “He asked if I was Miss or Mrs. Anderson, to be respectful. He probably wanted to avoid a misnomer,” I argue, for my sanity’s sake.
“He googled you, G. He saw you were hot and told you to continue stalking him. He then complimented you several more times and asked for your star signs, for crying out loud!”
“This has to be Photoshop,” Rhett whispers, leaning closer to the screen. “Right?”
“Has to be,” I agree, reaching across the counter for my mug of tea. I turn away to take a sip, worried that I’ll spill on my pile of quizzes. “Either way, he’s an ocean away. So, it doesn’t really matter what his intentions are or what he looks like.”
“Well, that shouldn’t matter,” Rhett says, his tone awfully pragmatic.
I stare back at him, visibly confused, as I lift the mug to my lips again. “No?”
“You’ve always wanted to live over there,” he informs me, as if I’ve forgotten.
I set my mug down, smirking in response to his ridiculous insinuation. “So I should, what, flirt with him in an attempt to move halfway across the world? Yeah, okay, Rhett. Sure.”
“I’m just saying it shouldn’t stop you. Teachers can work anywhere.
It’s not an impossibility.” Rhett is interesting in the way in which he loves to be contradictory but typically does so, or at least in my case, as a form of encouragement.
Rhett and Phoebe met in law school, so arguing comes rather naturally to both of them.
They hated each other with fiery passion until, after one late night spent together preparing for a mock trial, they suddenly didn’t.
“When I first met you, you were determined to finish college, move to England, and teach creepy British children for a living. It’s, like, all you talked about back then. ”
“Not all British children are creepy, darling,” Phoebe says, patting his cheek as she keeps her stare locked on me. “He watched The Shining far too young and it sort of messed with his head,” she whispers, as if he’d not hear her.
“Parenthood has made you both even more strange.”
“We’re operating on no sleep and one shared brain cell, be nice,” Phoebe says, taking her wineglass back from her husband.
“But, really, why didn’t you move there?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” I slide my gaze between them and the papers on my counter.
“Life . . . happened. I finished college, Grandma got sick, you guys got engaged, then married, and now Mason’s here and—” I shrug one shoulder.
“My whole life is here. The idea of living in England was a”—I wave my hand dismissively, finding the right word—“blip.”
“You know what you should do?” Rhett says, clearly ready to state his case.
“Use some of the money Bonnie left you to go visit.” Phoebe pouts her lips, tilting her face towards the camera as she seems to consider his proposition on my behalf.
“You, Phoebe, and Madi could all go together. You can take the box with you, open it there, with Martha’s family too. ”
“And perhaps, while there, you could go on a date with a cute Englishman,” Phoebe says, smiling into her glass.
“You’re both ridiculous.”
“I don’t know if you can tell based on the deep-purple hue under my eyes, but I need a vacation, G. My demon child refuses to sleep longer than two hours at a time.”
“I am going to tell Mason you called him that someday.”
“Tell him. He should know.”
I open my mouth, then shut it, unsure of what to say. Arguing has never been my strong suit, let alone arguing with two lawyers. I pick up my red pen and continue grading quizzes, keeping my eyes on the paper in front of me.
“Oh, see, now she’s mad at us,” Phoebe teases softly. “She’s gone back into her shell.”
“I’m not mad . . .” I say, circling the correct answer. “I’m just unsure of what to say.”
“Have you emailed him back yet?” Phoebe asks, typing on her phone.
“No, I was hoping you’d help me, remember?”
“You know you can’t show these emails to your students anymore, right?”
I set down my pen. “Yes, obviously. I’m going to tell them Callum didn’t want me to share our emails, but I can summarise and give them updates.”
Phoebe licks her lips as she nods. “There’s my devious sister. I missed her. Tell her to stay a while and plan a trip with me.”
“Phoebe . . .”
“Are you telling me Grandma wouldn’t want her three beloved granddaughters to go meet Martha’s family together?”
“Madi wouldn’t be able to get the time off work anyway,” I say.
“No, she’s in,” Phoebe says, flashing her phone screen to show her and Madi’s text thread. “She’s asking if you can go during March break . . .”
“Wait,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ears. “Wait, okay. This is insane, right?” I look at Rhett, who’s grinning ear to ear. “You’re fine with this?” I ask him. “You don’t mind solo parenting for a week?”
“I go back to work in April, so, it seems only fair,” Rhett answers, shrugging.
“I—”
“Madi’s asking if you want an aisle seat on your own or a middle seat between us?” Bee looks up, then tilts her head. “She gets a discount through work, it’s a good deal. Four hundred a ticket.”
Damn, that is a good deal. “Okay, yeah . . . But why am I in the middle seat?”
“You’ve got the narrowest hips.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not true but I still find myself agreeing. “Okay, yeah, middle is fine.”
“So you’re in?”
I look at her, pausing for a long second. “Yeah, I guess I am . . . Why not, right?”