Chapter 21
Anne had always been a good host. No, a great host.
She’d prided herself on anticipating every need: thick flax guest towels arrayed prettily on the bathroom counter; coasters placed just so on appropriate surfaces; candles on the dining room table trimmed just enough that they didn’t block anyone’s eye contact.
Every detail micromanaged and executed perfectly.
But she’d never thought before about her guests’ enjoyment or comfort.
Probably because she’d never really thought about her own enjoyment. Or comfort.
It was surprisingly easy to get philosophical when you were pushing around a couch.
Anne, grunting with the effort, managed to angle her four-seater a little wider, creating more distance from the love seat.
Yes, it looked out of place, but this way, there’d be less of a chance that Colton and Maverick would get hurt if they ran through the space between. Which, no doubt, they’d want to do.
For the first time, Anne would let them. After all, you were a kid only once.
(Not true: Sadie’s hands gripping hers as they spun beneath the black and seeing sky; Anne’s shriek of pure delight. Sometimes you could go back.)
Couch sufficiently angled, she sat down on the love seat and began to scroll through her music app.
Normally, her parties were silent affairs—she’d always believed background music was an embarrassing crutch for organizers who had no substantive vision—but silence wasn’t what Anne wanted anymore.
Noise, life, light: She craved all three with the same parts of her that yearned for Sadie.
The playlist she’d made was a Frankenstein’s monster of a compilation: Janet Jackson, Fugazi, and the Smiths for Sadie; Fleetwood Mac, Belinda Carlisle, and Bartók for Anne; Avenged Sevenfold and Missy Elliott had been Brooke and Claire’s favorites during adolescence.
James loved yacht rock for some inexplicable reason.
Madonna’s B-side tracks for Arthur. And for Talisha and Hal, Anne added someone named Rina Sawayama; she remembered Talisha mentioning once they’d seen her perform live.
It was an absolute, undeniable, uncurated mess.
But maybe—maybe—Anne would get to see someone’s face light up when they heard the songs she’d picked just for them. And that would be very, very nice.
Absorbed in her own thoughts, Anne leaned back against the love seat and absentmindedly touched one of her earrings: gold-and-onyx drop earrings in the shape of asymmetrical petals. Not really Anne’s, of course. They were Sadie’s, the ones she’d left in Anne’s car last week.
They were beautiful, those earrings, delicate and assertive, uneven yet perfect.
She’d never told Sadie how much she liked them—loved them, even, for how much they reminded Anne of her favorite person.
Well, Anne would do that from now on, and more.
She’d start to compliment her regularly, give Sadie the thousands of daily observations she’d been unable to voice over the past four years.
All that praise percolating inside her throat.
Somehow I like polka dot print when you wear it.
How do your hands stay so smooth? I can always pick you out in a crowd; I could never lose you.
They belonged to Sadie, these earrings, and so Anne needed to have them touching her.
“Beloved,” she whispered, and opened her flight tracker app. “You’re coming home to me.”
* * *
Brooke arrived at the house at eleven on the dot with enough supplies to get them all through an apocalypse.
“It’s not that much,” she insisted, expertly adjusting Kaisley in one arm as she dropped a stuffed diaper bag on the kitchen counter.
“Just what we agreed on: A waffle maker and eight bags of groceries and a cast-iron pancake pan and some disposable bamboo plates and a banner that says Happy Mother’s Day in pink cursive.
Oh, and I got these little floral crowns for you and Sadie and Talisha to wear.
I figured you probably wouldn’t want yours, but—”
“I’ll wear it,” Anne said immediately. Why the hell not? She’d already made a playlist with Gordon Lightfoot on it; she might as well go all out. “Did you get one for yourself, too?”
Brooke looked surprised. “Oh. I actually didn’t even think about it.”
“Then,” Anne said, “we’ll share mine.” Impulsively, she leaned in and kissed Brooke’s cheek. “Happy Mother’s Day. Thank you for letting me help organize. That’s the real present, you know.”
Without warning, Brooke grabbed Anne with her free arm and hugged her, Kaisley pressing between them. She held on tightly for a long moment, then let go, and when Anne saw her face again, there were tears in Brooke’s eyes.
“You’re welcome,” Brooke said. She cleared her throat.
Kaisley squawked and looked up at Anne, as if agreeing with her mother.
“Hello there,” Anne said awkwardly. She’d never been good at talking to babies or young children, even her own. Especially her own.
“Actually, Mom, would you hold her for a few minutes while I bring the rest of the stuff into the house? It won’t take me long.” Without waiting for a response, Brooke pressed Kaisley into Anne’s arms.
Reflexively, Anne took her. The baby squirmed, already trying to escape.
Oh God. This was a terrible idea. “Look, why don’t I bring in the bags, and you can just relax here with the baby for a little bit.”
“‘Relax’ and ‘baby’ are words that don’t belong anywhere near the same sentence.” Brooke was already heading for the front door. “It’s fine, Mom. She won’t break, okay? I promise. Go sit down with her. Make some faces. She likes that. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ve got exactly one face,” Anne called after her. “One face! She can take or leave it!”
Once they were alone, Kaisley burbled, more spit than sound, and craned her head to look at the front door.
How long had it been since Anne had held this baby? After she was born, of course, and then again over the holidays when they’d taken family photographs. Were those the only times?
She felt uncomfortably aware of her own inadequacy.
Spending time with her granddaughter shouldn’t be a struggle.
She’d never been any good at it when Claire or Brooke were babies either, but at least with her daughters there’d been some sense of familiarity, an uneasy solidarity.
All three of them held one thing in common: the obligation to live in Anne’s body.
Sadie would know exactly what to do.
“Look,” she informed Kaisley, “this is a little weird for me, too. But we just have to hold on for a little while until your mother’s done setting up. And then you won’t have to spend any more time alone with some strange lady. Okay? Do we have a deal?”
Kaisley looked up at her with surprise, one chubby fist lifting in the air. She stared at Anne. Then her face contracted, the surest sign of imminent baby doom. Within seconds, that tiny mouth released a wail loud enough to be heard in Long Beach.
“Oh, for f—Pete’s sake.” Anne bounced the baby gently, trying not to be exasperated. Brooke had been gone for, what, all of thirty seconds? “Kaisley. Come on. Cut me a break.”
Kaisley’s cry rose into a shriek. She was already red-faced from the effort, squalling out her fury and fear.
Anne tried to remember how to comfort and soothe. Had she ever known? Thirty-one years ago, she’d let this baby’s mother scream it out in her crib behind the nursery’s closed door. They’d both been so frightened.
“Kaisley,” she said again, rubbing her back, and began to walk in the direction of the bedroom. Babies liked being walked, didn’t they? Claire had. “Shhh. Shhhh. It’s fine. There’s nothing to be scared about. She’s coming back. She’s coming back for you. I promise.”
But Kaisley didn’t know that, did she? Her mother was gone, with no guarantee of return, and now Kaisley was all alone, with only a stranger to keep her company. You’d cry. Of course you would.
“You’ve never been to my house before, have you?
” Anne kept her voice gentle and bright.
“I’m an awful host for not showing you around.
I know. I know. That’s right. Come on. Can you open your eyes, Kaisley?
Can you see my bedroom? All the pretty furniture your Grandma Anne picked out?
I have my faults, God knows, but taste sure isn’t one of them. ”
Gulping in air, Kaisley continued to wail against Anne’s chest, coughing up a chain of hiccuped sobs.
“I’ll choose not to take that as criticism.
Look, here’s my bed, and my nightstand, and my dresser.
” She didn’t think about the words tumbling out of her mouth, just prattled on and on to cut through Kaisley’s cries.
“See those flowers? I like to keep flowers there. And sometimes, Sadie comes in to take one or two for herself. I pretend it annoys me, but, really, it makes me so happy. Yes, it does. You know, maybe in a couple of years, you’ll be calling her Grandma Sadie.
What do you think about that? Isn’t it—hey, ouch—”
Kaisley was pulling on one of Anne’s earrings, the tug of her fist surprisingly strong. Sobs still hiccuped out of her throat, and her round cheeks were streaked with tears, but the new discovery was proving to be an effective distraction.
Anne freed a hand, shifting Kaisley into her other arm as she did, and carefully extracted the earring from the baby’s fist. “These are mine,” she told her, then amended, “Well, not mine. They’re really Sadie’s earrings.
But for right now, they’re mine. Just until I see her again, and then I’m going to give them back to her because I won’t need them anymore. I’ll have the real thing.”
Why in God’s name was Anne telling a baby all this? It was pointless. Just nervous babble, no better or more coherent than what was coming out of Kaisley’s mouth.