Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Aweek later, I am unlocking our hotel room door in Charleston while Emmy giggles from behind me.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she says as the door beeps, and I swing it open. “It feels like we’re playing hooky.”
It’s our weekend away, and it does feel like we’re playing hooky.
We’ve left behind husbands, kids, and animals, and we have facials and massages booked in an hour.
Tonight, we’re going to have cocktails. Well, Emmy is.
I will have to be satisfied with a very yummy mocktail, but still. This feels… decadent. Degenerate, even.
Wonderful.
“Ta-da!” I say, and usher her into our two-queen bedroom with a balcony overlooking the swimming pool.
It’s not particularly upscale, a chain hotel on the outskirts of Charleston that does a weekend deal—breakfast and spa treatment included—but it feels special all the same.
It’s not every day I do something like this, and I’m pretty sure Emmy does it even less.
“Wow.” She comes into the room and does a twirl. “This is fantastic.” She stops mid second twirl to gaze at me seriously. “Thank you, Abby. I really think I needed this.”
“I needed it, too.” I put my overnight bag down on one of the beds. “I keep feeling like I forgot something, but I think it’s my kids.”
“You didn’t forget them,” Emmy declares. “You intentionally left them behind. Big difference.”
“Too true.”
We grin at each other, then she laughs and claps her hands. “Do you think we have time for a swim before our spa treatment?”
I glance at my watch with a shrug. “Forty-five minutes or so, so why not?”
Just five minutes later, we’re down by the pool in our swimsuits.
By swim, I soon realize, Emmy meant lying on a sun lounger and sipping a cocktail, which is fine by me. My maternity bathing suit is a tent-like piece of black Lycra, and I’m happy to stay supine with a towel draped over me, sipping a fabulous mocktail called a Tropical Sunrise.
We left our phones upstairs so we can’t check on anything, and no one can contact us.
It’s definitely a two-way street. We’ve only been gone for about four hours, and I am already feeling a little twitchy, wondering if Josh is going to remember to feed the dog or hang out the wet laundry.
Am I going to come home to starving pets and a washer full of mildewy clothes?
I don’t think I am, and it’s a far cry from the kind of military-level planning that was required for our old New Jersey lives if I went away.
Back then, I had to leave multiple typed pages of instructions for getting kids to various sports practices, filling out permission slips, and packing lunches.
Life really is much easier now, in many ways… and I miss it.
I sip my mocktail and try to relax.
“It’s like I don’t know what to do with myself,” Emmy says after a moment. She’s wearing an enormous sunhat to protect her fair skin from the sun and a banana-yellow tankini with a ruffled skirt. She looks fabulous.
“I know what you mean,” I tell her, relieved she’s feeling the way I am—like fifteen minutes of relaxation might be fifteen minutes too many. “It’s kind of weird.”
“Ed was really happy for me to go, in the end,” she tells me. “He practically insisted.”
“That’s great,” I tell her, although if he hadn’t let her go, considering he just had his own corporate getaway, I would have been annoyed on Emmy’s behalf.
“He’s been really sweet lately,” she says, then pauses in a way that makes me instinctively brace for more.
“I had a mammogram a couple of weeks ago.” She’s speaking in her usual, matter-of-fact way, but there’s a waver to her voice that fills me with alarm.
“Something came up on it—a cluster of cells.”
I open my mouth to ask her why she hasn’t told me this, then shut it again. Not important right now.
“They referred me for a biopsy, and I had that, and I don’t have cancer.
So.” She gives a shaky smile. “But I do have some kind of weird cell activity that could lead to cancer, like one day in the future, but also maybe won’t.
Probably won’t. So really, it’s nothing.
” She presses her lips together and gives a shake of her head.
“I mean, I’m not worried at all, but Ed got a little panicked. So, here I am.”
“Oh, Emmy.” I reach over and take her hand. “That must have been scary.”
“Well.” She shrugs. “You try not to think about the worst-case scenario, right? I would have told you, by the way, but I was trying not to think about it, and I didn’t want people worrying and asking me if I’d heard and all that.
” She sighs and squeezes my hand. “Sorry. I can see on your face that you wish I had told you. I guess I should have.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I assure her and squeeze back. “As long as you’re okay.”
“I am,” she affirms, “but it did make me think. One day, I may not be. I mean, that’s guaranteed, right? You grow old. You get sick. You die.”
Wow, this is not the kind of conversation I anticipated on our girly weekend away, but I appreciate that Emmy’s got something on her mind. “I guess so,” I say after a moment. I am wondering how far she’s going to go with this.
“Sorry, I know this is a little grim for a poolside conversation,” she tells me with an uncertain laugh.
“But it did get me thinking. We have to make the most of our lives—not just the great things, the Christmases and the birthdays and the parties and all that, but the small moments, too. The boring and drudgery-filled times, which frankly is a lot of my day. But… there can be a gratefulness of those moments, can’t there?
And a joy found in them? Instead of wishing I was in Paris or Arizona, I can be glad I’m right here, even when right here is boring or hard.
” She looks at me anxiously, like she needs me to agree, which is new for Emmy.
I guess this health scare has made her reconsider her life, which I can understand.
“Of course, there can,” I reply, which feels like the only answer. And yet I find myself thinking of just how much of my time and energy is spent worrying about what I can’t control or grousing about what I don’t like but is also no big deal.
Emmy is right. We can choose to be grateful.
And right now, I am grateful for my Tropical Sunrise and my imminent massage. I smile at Emmy and squeeze her hand one last time.
“I’m so glad we did this.”
Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, we manage to relax into relaxation. Funny, how it takes some effort—at least at first—to simply slow down and enjoy yourself. Of course, an hour-long massage helps. I practically float out of the spa.
We have dinner at the restaurant, then walk the Haddad Riverfront Park, enjoying the sun setting over the placid waters of the Kanawha River and talking about anything but our regular lives.
I learn that Emmy majored in English in college and loves poetry, something she kept pretty secret beforehand. I also learn that her parents, while pretty local, are practically housebound—her mom with COPD, her dad as her carer—and haven’t been able to be very involved in her kids’ lives.
“Ed’s mom comes around a lot and helps out,” she continues. “Maybe too much. She’s always complaining about the state of my floors.”
“I think that’s practically a mother-in-law’s duty,” I quip, and she snorts.
“What about you? Will Josh’s parents help out when this baby comes?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Josh’s parents live in Maryland, so not even that far away, but they haven’t visited us yet. They keep saying they’re going to, but then something comes up. They have very active retirement lives, in which pickleball and wine tasting seem to feature prominently.
“You must be missing your mom,” Emmy says quietly.
I feel a lurch inside, as if the ground beneath me has shifted.
And in some ways, that is exactly how it feels—with every baby, my mom was there, in her briskly practical way.
She was the emotional foundation for my experience of pregnancy and motherhood, and doing both without her feels both weird and lonely.
“I do,” I say quietly. “She’s been gone awhile now, but this brings it all back in a way.” I know I’ve been thinking about her a lot more than I usually do.
“Well, you know you’ll have plenty of help,” Emmy assures me. “But I know it’s not the same.”
No, it’s not the same, but I’m still glad to be part of such a close-knit community. A close-knit community, despite all the relaxation, Emmy and I are both eager to get back to.
By Sunday morning, we’re definitely feeling a little restless. Emmy has succumbed to the siren call of her phone, and she keeps checking it.
“Everything okay?” I ask lightly as we sit down for breakfast after going through the substantial buffet offerings. I am looking forward to my cinnamon and apple French toast with plenty of whipped cream.
“Yes.” She gives me a guilty smile. “Sorry, I’m as bad as my teenagers. It’s just hard, being away. I want to know what’s going on.”
“I know, me, too.” I miss being part of the cheerful chaos of our home life, even just for a weekend.
I’m also wondering if the house is going to be a pigsty upon my return, with four loads of laundry Josh will have forgotten to do.
Still, I’m glad we did this. Getting away has been fun…
and it’s also made us both appreciate what we left behind.
I know I’ll return to Wildflower Valley with a new appreciation for just about everything.
It isn’t until we’re in the car heading home, happy and relaxed and ready to return to our lives, that Emmy drops what amounts to an emotional nuclear bomb, detonating my newly placid mood.
“Has Bethany said anything to you about her and Ben?” Her tone is way too innocent.
“No…” I give her a swift, searching glance from the driver’s seat before turning back to the road. “What kind of thing do you mean?”
Emmy blows out a breath. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t say anything, but if it were me… I think I’d want a heads up.”
Now I’m feeling really nervous. “They’re okay, aren’t they?
I mean, Ben’s not thinking of breaking up with her?
” Because after their back-and-forth last fall, Bethany has seemed happier than ever.
Even though I’ve worried about them getting too serious too soon, I don’t want my daughter to be heartbroken.
But he gave her that housewarming present… they have to be solid, don’t they?
“No, no,” Emmy assures me. “Not at all. In fact, the opposite.” She hesitates in a very unEmmy-like way, and I give her an exasperated look.
“Emmy, whatever it is, please just spill.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she cries, covering her eyes. “I just didn’t want you and Josh to be blindsided. Ben thinks you won’t be, but… I have my doubts.”
“Blindsided?” I shake my head, incredulous. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Ben’s going to ask Josh’s permission,” Emmy blurts, and I still don’t know what she means.
“Permission for what?”
“His blessing,” she emphasizes. “Both of yours. For him to ask Bethany to marry him.”