Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
LAUREN
I open the enormous box of doughnuts on the table in the office kitchen, hoping there are still some left.
When I brought them in this morning, Patrick laughed and asked, “You’re bringing doughnuts to your first day of work?”
“A friend had them delivered to my house, and this is way more than my girls and I could ever eat,” I’d told him. There was no way I could explain who that friend was.
For the last three days, starting the morning after our phone call, Jameson has had ridiculous amounts of food delivered to my house.
First, it was a caramel latte and a dozen bagels with a note that said, “Hope Iris’s hand is feeling better today.
” Then another caramel latte and a dozen croissants, with a note that said, “Hope your week is getting better.” And this morning, my favorite latte again and a dozen specialty doughnuts, with a note wishing me good luck on my first day at the new job.
Thank goodness bagels and croissants freeze well.
At this rate, the girls and I will have breakfast for a month.
I’ve sent him thank you messages via text each time but haven’t talked to him since I fell asleep during our conversation a few nights ago—partially because I’m embarrassed that he saw me crying like that, and partially because I don’t remember what I said to him right before I fell asleep.
I was so tired I felt almost drunk, and it really could have been anything.
I’m halfway afraid that I admitted how much he hurt me five years ago when I thought we were turning a corner—thought we’d established that we both had feelings for each other—and then he told me he couldn’t “do this right now” and introduced me to Josh.
But now it’s the end of the day and I’m having a major energy crash. I thought chasing toddlers around day in, day out was exhausting, but I’d honestly forgotten how draining it is using my brain like this all day.
Today has been a lot, but in a good way. However, I’m starving and tired, and I could use a little sugar pick-me-up so I have the energy to make dinner for my girls and play with them when I get home.
I’ve just taken a bite of the most amazing glazed old-fashioned doughnut when AJ appears in the doorway.
“Hey, how was the first day?” She leans against the opening, one ankle crossed over the other.
She’s in heels and wide leg trousers with a skintight turtleneck, arms folded under her chest, and her dark brown hair hangs in loose waves past her shoulders.
I wonder if it’s normal for the GM to stop and check on new hires, and I suspect it’s probably not. I swallow my bite of doughnut, and tell her, “It was great, but also exhausting. I’m so glad to be back doing what I love, but it’s an adjustment, for sure.”
“Most of the things in life that are worth doing are also exhausting,” she says.
I laugh out loud at that and tell her, “You sound exactly like my best friend, Petra. She hosts a TV show, and I think she said that exact thing on last week’s episode.”
“Wait, you’re friends with Petra Ivanova?” There’s true awe in her voice.
I’m taken aback for half a second at the use of Petra’s new last name. It’s still hard for me to adjust to, even though it’s been more than six months since she took Aleksandr’s name.
“Yeah. She was one of my closest friends in Park City, back before she moved to New York to be with Alex.” I’m careful not to mention the circumstances around the marriage, since it’s something the two of them refuse to talk about for fear the media will get ahold of the story.
“Oh my gosh,” AJ sighs and leans against the doorframe. “That’s so cool.”
“She’s going to be at the game tomorrow night,” I say.
New York is in town to play the Rebels and Petra’s going to come up for it.
“One of our other best friends, Jackson, is driving down from New Hampshire for the game too.” I wish Sierra could come as well, but she’s tooling around Europe with Beau.
“So you’ll be at the game?”
“Yeah, Petra got us all tickets.”
“You’d better not wear an Ivanov jersey,” AJ teases.
“I’ve been a Rebels fan since I was old enough to know what hockey is. Don’t you worry.”
“Where are you guys sitting?” she asks, and I pull up the ticket Petra texted me and show her. “All right, I’ll try to stop by and say hi. And I promise not to fangirl too hard over Petra.”
I can’t quite hold in the laugh that bubbles up as I imagine this powerful woman fangirling over my best friend. “She’s surprisingly down-to-earth,” I assure AJ.
Luckily, the team’s practice facility and offices are in Brighton, so it’s a short drive back to Brookline.
And when I pull into my driveway, I notice Jules’s truck is still on the street, and so is Audrey’s SUV.
The lights are on in the house, and I can see people moving around inside.
I just sit in my car for a moment before I pull into the garage, absorbing the fact that this place feels like home already.
After I walk through the back door into the sunroom, and slip out of my shoes and hang my coat, I stop to listen to the sound of my kids playing and my friends and cousin laughing together. I have this moment of calm, like this is what was meant to happen.
I blink back the tears that spring to my eyes at the realization that Josh made this all possible, but doesn’t get to be here to enjoy this with us.
Even though it’s been months since he passed, the grief still comes on suddenly.
It’s always present, and sometimes it can feel overwhelming, or sometimes it’s tempered by the reality that our marriage wasn’t great for a year or two before he died.
But today I’m filled with guilt that he did all of this—bought this house, started to remodel it—for us.
He was working on making “us” better, and I didn’t know it until after he died.
I take a deep breath as I walk into the kitchen, and I’m amazed to find that it actually looks like a kitchen. “Oh my God!”
“Mommy!” my kids yell as they run into the kitchen and each grab on to one of my legs.
“Hey, girls,” I say. “What are you doing?” I lean down and pat their heads, then take another look around the kitchen, amazed that there are cabinets in all the right places.
Yesterday the boxes arrived and were piled in what will be the informal eating area, between the kitchen and the sunroom, where we’re standing now.
“We play with friends,” Iris tells me.
“Friends?”
“She’s talking about Jules and Audrey,” Morgan says, walking into the kitchen with Jameson’s sisters on her heels.
“You guys, this looks amazing. I can’t believe you did this all in one day.”
“This part was easy,” Jules says. “Installing cabinets doesn’t take that long. Tomorrow the people from the stone yard will be here to measure and template the countertops, I’ll finish the trim work, and next week the painters will be here to paint. You’re still set on the color, right?”
I’ve chosen a grayish sage green for the lower cabinets and white for the upper cabinets, and I think the combination will look great with the soapstone counters and the original sink.
“Yep. I can’t believe how this is all coming together,” I tell them. “And I can’t wait to show Petra and Jackson when they’re here tomorrow.”
“They’re going to be so happy for you,” Morgan says.
“I know. They’re going to love what you ladies have done here,” I tell Jules and Audrey as I glance around the space and through the opening with pocket doors that they’ve created between the kitchen and the living room in the front of the house.
“And I know they’re going to absolutely love the primary bedroom and bathroom upstairs, as much as I do. ”
“He knew you’d love it,” Jules says, then clamps her lips together as she and Audrey share a look that raises goose bumps along my spine.
“He?” I ask. They didn’t know Josh. What are they talking about? When they don’t respond, I say, “What was that look you two just shared?”
Jules’s cheeks turn pink, and she glances at Audrey who gives her a small nod. “When we took over this project, right after Jameson fired Woody, the upstairs looked just like the downstairs—completely gutted.”
“What—” I look from one of them to the other. “What do you mean, gutted?”
“I mean it had new windows, plumbing, and electrical, like the rest of the house, but no other work had been done up there.”
“But . . .” I stare at them, my eyes wide. “Does that mean you two designed and completed the upstairs before I moved in?”
“Something like that,” Audrey says.
“What happened, exactly?”
I’m part-confused and part-furious. For the past few weeks since I’ve been living here, I’ve been torn between gratitude to Josh for making this possible and guilt that I’d doubted him and his feelings for me while he was making a home here for us.
And now they’re telling me the part I thought Josh had specifically designed with me in mind was not from him at all?
It feels like such a ridiculous hope to have clung to, but I believed that Josh designing that space proved that he knew me, and loved me, and was making things right.
“Design isn’t really my forte,” Jules says. “So Audrey worked with Jameson on redesigning the upstairs.”
My mouth opens but no words come out, and Jules, Audrey, and Morgan all stare at me with looks of concern. “With . . . Jameson?”
“It was sort of,” Audrey says hesitantly, “his idea.”
“Define ‘his idea.’” I can’t even quantify the confusing emotions that are circling in my brain right now, but my body has decided to respond by flooding my system with adrenaline, and I’m pretty sure I’ve broken out in a full-body sweat while also feeling frozen in shock.
“He wanted to make sure that the upstairs was livable before you and the girls moved in.”
“So the design?” I ask. “The bedroom and bathroom . . .?”
The sisters share another look. “It was mostly him,” Audrey says. “I drew up the plans, but he was the one who knew you, so he picked out what he thought you’d like.”