Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
jade
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come to lunch?” Reeve asks Monday morning as we take our steaming cups from a campus coffee truck—black coffee for him, hot chocolate for me—and stroll past the quad. “Parents love me.”
I attempt a sip of my drink but pull back quickly as the too-hot liquid burns my tongue. “God, no. You’d run screaming from the restaurant before the apps are served.”
“Why are your parents out here anyway?”
“It’s the Kelly family fall trip. They come out to the Midwest every year for a week with my godparents. Fly in, rent a car, and head for the woods two hours north of here. That’s how I discovered Shafer, you know. Driving past campus every year of my life.”
“Huh. So once a year since we were babies we were within a couple miles of each other.”
“Wonder if we ever laid eyes on each other.”
“Be for real. If you’d ever seen this face before, you’d never forget it.”
I trace his jawline, letting myself get caught up in the brilliant color of his eyes. “Can’t argue with that.”
An hour later I pull up to the arrivals section at the airport and get out of the car to look for my mom.
My parents were supposed to rent a vehicle and meet me in town for lunch before they head north, but twenty minutes ago I was greeted by a text from my mom saying Dad had a last-minute invitation to have lunch with a local business associate and would I mind picking her up.
A mix of relief and irritation hit me as soon as I read her message, relief at not having to endure a meal with my father and irritation he couldn’t be bothered to give his own wife a ride into town. One thing I didn’t feel was surprise.
My eyes sweep over my mother twice before I realize it’s her.
Stopped on the sidewalk among a sea of travelers pouring out of the airport double doors, she looks older than the last time I saw her, but that’s not all.
She’s wearing her usual uniform—khaki slacks, pastel twinset, sensible loafers, her ash-blond hair swept into a smooth chignon—but it looks off.
Her clothes, always perfectly tailored, look half a size too big for her slender frame, and a few strands of hair have escaped their bobby pin prison.
“Jade!” she says with a too-big smile, waving.
I hurry over to her, feeling protective of her in the busy crowd. “Hi, Mom.” I hug her, comforted by her familiar rose scent. “Are you good? You look a little frazzled.”
“Oh, gosh, I’m fine. I’m just so used to traveling with your father, I nearly lost my way in the airport.”
“What, he just walked off the plane and left you to navigate alone?”
“Gosh, no, we parted ways at the rental car desk. I only mean—well, never mind. You know I have no sense of direction. Anyway, how are you, Jadey? You look lovely.”
I force a smile. My mom almost got lost between the rental car desk and the exit doors thirty yards away? The longer I go without seeing my parents, the more I wonder how they managed to keep me alive for eighteen years. “I’m good. Come on, let’s go get lunch. No bag for you?”
“Only my purse. Dad has our bags in the rental. Goodness, I forgot you’re still driving this thing!
” she exclaims when she notices my white car at the curb.
“Don’t worry, I think I’ve talked your father into passing down his car when you graduate.
” She pauses and raises an eyebrow. “That is, if you plan to remain an American citizen.”
She’s joking, but my stomach tenses at the topic. “Thanks. How’s sushi sound?” I usher her over to my car.
“I’m easy, Jadey. Oh, but will they have mineral water? I avoid tap these days. Mineral water and cloth napkins are my only requirements.”
“Um, unlikely. Let me think of a different place.” Somerset boasts mineral water and cloth napkins, but the possibility of running into Reeve—even if he’s just stopping by for his paycheck—feels like two worlds colliding.
I don’t want my parents anywhere near him.
I think for a minute, hoping my mom will let the mineral water go, but no such luck.
“Dad’s sorry he can’t be here, but you know your father and his work. The man could be stranded on a desert island and he’d find a way to network with the coconuts.” She chuckles at her own joke.
Because it’s so amusing my dad hasn’t seen his only child in four months and opts for a business lunch with prospective clients over a meal with me.
“It’s easier without him anyway,” I say as I pull into the busy airport traffic.
When they’re together, my mom fusses over my dad every chance she gets, and I sit stewing in irritation and bad memories.
Mineral water in hand and cloth napkin draped elegantly across her lap, Mom leans back in her woven chair at the little bistro we happened upon. “So.” She smiles rather unpleasantly. “Last we heard you’re jetting off to Spain after graduation. Is that set in stone?”
I swirl my straw in my glass of tap water. “No. Deadline’s coming up, though, so I have to make my final decision.”
“You haven’t yet?” Mom asks in surprise. “Every decision you’ve ever made has been final. Well . . . except for that hair.”
“It’s a big decision. A lot of money, planning, interviews, applications. And saying goodbye to Reeve.” I wonder why I saved him for last when he’s the entire reason.
“Oh, phooey.” My mom waves me off so suddenly she almost takes down her near-empty glass of white wine. Drunk already?
“It’s not a big decision? You and Dad are totally against it.”
“Dad is,” Mom says coyly. Who is this woman?
“And you’re not?”
She leans in like she doesn’t want to be overheard. “Truth be told, I’m a little envious. When I was young, I dreamed of traveling alone and seeing parts of the world I’ve only read about.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You know my story. I met your father, he swept me off my feet, and it was all too easy to forget what came before.” She pats my hand on the table. “And then I had my baby girl, and everything that came before wasn’t worth remembering anyway.”
I give a small smile. “But I don’t know what came before. You never talk about your life before Dad.”
A faraway look comes over her green eyes before she blinks it away. “Well,” she says uncertainly. “As much as you’re cut from a different cloth, Jade, I suppose I wanted many of the same things you do.” She takes a long drink of wine, keeping her eyes down.
“What things?”
“Oh.” She takes her time, making a show of having to think about her answer, but I know she’s acting. She knows her answer. “Adventure and travel, I suppose. And, well . . . freedom.”
I wait, hoping she’ll elaborate, but something about her awkwardness stops me from pushing her. She doesn’t want to talk about her life before Dad.
“Anyway, what I mean to say is I love to see you prioritizing yourself and your dreams and not letting anyone hold you back.”
“That’s important,” I agree. “But so is Reeve.”
“Sure, but Jade, you’re young. If it’s not him, it’ll be another wonderful man. You have the whole world at your feet.”
“So you wish you’d prioritized your own plans when Dad came along?”
“What a question.” She puts a hand to her chest and laughs uncomfortably, like I’ve just asked for the secrets of her sex life. “Everything turned out, didn’t it?”
Everything turned out shitty. Mom devoting herself to a man who will never return the favor, faking her way through life with her phony smiles, all the while she can’t navigate an airport on her own, and life is chipping away at her piece by piece.
That’s why she looks the way she does, frail and lost in her polished clothing, still so beautiful at fifty, but her eyes looking more lost than ever.
She’ll never answer the question of whether she wishes she’d prioritized her own dreams, but I don’t need her to. I know what I wish she’d done.