1. Caroline A Starring Role
caroline: a starring role
IT STILL HITS ME EVERY now and then. As I walk down beautiful, gritty Fifth Avenue in the most wonderful city in the world, New York, striding in my pumps, I stop, look up, take a deep breath.
Cooler weather has been bestowed upon us early this year.
It seems the steamy, sultry summer is behind us earlier than usual—not that I experienced much of it; my daughter Vivi, my son Preston, and I fly south to Peachtree Bluff the moment school lets out.
But still, there’s just something about fall in New York, the crispness of it.
It’s like a fresh start, a new beginning.
The heat has lifted. Everything feels possible: A bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils and a blank, pristine notebook. That’s what life is right now.
Amid the honk of car horns, the hustle and bustle of bodies going to work, going shopping, going out for the day, the world goes silent. It is just me and that glittering, gleaming golden sign. It looks like it has been there forever and, yet, it is so new, that sign: SLOANE EMERSON NEW YORK.
Only four years old, yes. But also, maybe even more so, twenty-two years in the making.
A creation that began, in some small way, when my mother Ansley Murphy moved my sisters, Sloane and Emerson, and me from my beloved New York to the sleepy seaside town of Peachtree Bluff, Georgia.
I was a persnickety teenager then. I told her if she named her new design shop on the main street running through that one-stoplight town after me, I would die.
Instead, she named it after my two sisters, who I suspect she liked more than me at that particular moment: Sloane Emerson.
Well played, Mom. Well played. I’d like to think that every now and then I handled my daughter just that deftly.
I glared at a rollerblading Door Dash delivery boy who nearly ran over my shoe, which, frankly, I had no right to do.
I didn’t own the sidewalk, after all. I did, however, own the building I was standing in front of.
Or, well, at least half owned with my husband James, a hedge fund manager who was only my husband on paper.
We’d been separated for years. Amicably, now, to my immense credit since he was the one to have an affair with a reality TV star on national television.
As I put my hand on the gleaming brass handle—perfectly polished—and opened the door, two things hit me at once: the air fragrant with our signature jasmine, dogwood, and magnolia blend candles, and the fact that I really should proceed with our divorce.
It was getting a little ridiculous to let it linger.
Well, maybe I’d do that tomorrow. If fall meant anything, it was new beginnings.
“Good morning, Missus Beaumont,” my store manager Deenie said.
Her blond hair was pulled back in a severe, yet somehow perky, ponytail and she was wearing a floral-print dress that could have been ever-so-slightly too springy for a chilly day in New York but that, all the same, made me feel optimistic about life.
I had hired her on a day that I was missing Peachtree Bluff and the good manners and slow pace of the South.
I had hired her because her real name was Gardenia, perhaps the only Southern flower not in our signature candle blend, and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have another flower in Sloane Emerson New York.
I had no idea how fully capable she would be of running this flagship store while I tended to franchise business all over the country with my once-sort-of-boyfriend, now-sort-of-gray-area-person Wes and, of course, my mom and sisters.
Deenie was an expert at smoothing over HR problems, could sweet-talk any vendor, delivery person, or customer, and had this way of talking people into things so subtly that they always agreed with her yet never quite knew it had been her idea.
What I lacked in diplomacy, she made up for in spades.
I was the bad cop, she was the good cop.
We were, like the quartz bookends I adjusted ever so slightly on the round center table in the store, a perfect pair.
“Deenie, darling, how long have you worked here?” I asked as I walked toward the counter she was perched behind.
“Two and a half years next week.”
“Yes, right. And how many times in those two and a half years do you imagine that I have asked you to call me Caroline?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Twelve, thirteen hundred?”
“That seems about right. So, might I ask, why is it that you insist on calling me Missus Beaumont?”
“Growing up in North Carolina my dad always taught me that you call your boss mister or missus. Even if they are younger than you are, it is a sign of respect. And I respect you oh so very much.”
I smiled. She was so cute with those sweet little dimples that belied her nearly thirty years, making her seem much younger. I shrugged. “I can’t argue with that. But just know that when and if you decide to start calling me Caroline, I will still know you respect me.”
“Duly noted, Missus Beaumont.”
Alright. Well, whatever.
“Are you okay to start training Vivi today?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “I just can’t wait. She’s so pretty and smart, just like her mama. She is going to take to this store like a fish to water. I just know it.”
I scrunched my nose. That was a strong overstatement, but Deenie could almost make me believe it.
Vivi had never been much for manual labor, but I couldn’t deny that after Hurricane Pearl had swept through Peachtree Bluff, she had worked so hard to help rebuild the town.
But, back in New York, it was back to her snarky, teenage ways.
When she wasn’t texting Tyler—her long-distance Peachtree Bluff boyfriend—she was posting selfies or gossiping with her friends.
All typical teenage stuff. But we were Murphys.
As I had said before and would say again: we were made for greatness.
My mother always believed high school children needed to either be playing a sport or working in the afternoons to keep them from getting into trouble.
I believed she was right, and, the truth was, as a junior, Vivi had a lot on her plate working to accrue accolades and activities for her upcoming college applications, which had occupied a lot of our summer.
I was almost ready for school to start next week for Vivi and Preston because we all needed a break.
Vivi hadn’t been giving me as hard a time lately as she had after her dad and I first separated—and she had blamed me for everything even though he had been the one to cheat—and I was grateful for that.
I was also grateful that her boyfriend lived a plane ride away and getting pregnant via Snapchat was a technology not yet invented.
But I wanted her to be a hard worker, someone who could make her own way in the world.
You never knew what life was going to throw at you.
“I hope you’re right, Deenie,” I said, taking a sip of what was officially my first cinnamon spice latte of the season.
My favorite organic coffee shop made a sugar-free, stevia-sweetened syrup that was literally the nectar of the gods.
I was trying to get Kyle, my soon-to-be brother-in-law, to start a Peachtree Perk in New York like he had in LA.
No luck yet. Until then, this was the second-best latte I’d ever had.
“And, listen, Vivi can be, um… acerbic. So don’t let her hurt your feelings. ”
Deenie bit her lip, hiding her smile. “Huh. Interesting. I wonder where she gets that from.”
I smirked. “Perhaps Missus Beaumont.”
She stifled a laugh and said, “I have an update on all the deliveries that have been delayed. Would you like it?”
Before I could answer, my phone rang. It was my middle sister, Sloane.
I talked to her pretty much every day, but not usually so early.
It was only 8:21, so she would just have gotten home from dropping off my nephews, AJ and Taylor, at school.
But we were all in hyper wedding-planner mode for our baby sister Emerson’s upcoming nuptials, so I assumed it was some sort of Peachtree Bluff hilarity, and I was here for it.
“Good morning, my love,” I practically sang.
“Caroline.”
Right away I could tell my sister wasn’t okay. “Sloane? What’s going on?”
“I think I’m losing the baby.”
I felt panicky, but I was trying to stay calm. My first thought was why in the world was she calling me? I was in New York, hours away from her. I wasn’t going to be much help in this situation. Then again, I was the big sister, the one who was good under pressure.
“Okay. Don’t panic.” Why did I say that? When in the history of the world has telling someone not to panic ever helped?
“This can’t be happening again,” she cried.
“Okay, Sloane. Listen to me. We don’t know anything yet. Where’s Adam?”
“He’s in Atlanta at a trade show, and, well, I can’t find Mom. Her phone must be off or dead because it’s going straight to voicemail.”
“Okay. Are you in pain?”
“Not physically.”
“Okay. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to talk to you the whole way, and you are going to drive yourself to the doctor. Can you do that? Can you drive?”
“I think so,” she said sullenly, sniffling.
This was not ideal, but she was only a couple miles away from the doctor’s office.
Although, at twenty-three weeks pregnant, this could be an ambulance-requiring emergency.
The nearest NICU was hours away. They would have to be airlifted if the baby was born now.
It probably wouldn’t survive. But maybe?
Twenty-three weeks was the absolute cusp, I knew. I had to stop myself from spinning.
“I can’t do this again,” she said, crying again.
“Sloane, listen to me. Take a deep breath.”
I heard her breathe on the other end of the line.
“Put me on speaker, put your seat belt on, take another deep breath, and drive. You’ve got this. You’re tough and brave, and you’ve got this.”