3. Chapter Three
T ime with my best friend was always what I needed when everything in my life felt chaotic and like it was too much to handle. When I arrived in Ashland, she was already waiting in our hotel room. Since it was just the two of us this year, we opted for a room with a balcony instead of a two-bedroom suite. Usually, Amber traveled with me, and Meredith’s daughter Vivian drove down from Portland to meet us. But Vivian was spending the summer teaching ceramics at a camp in North Carolina, and Amber was leaving on her honeymoon in two days. It was the first time our Shakespeare Festival tradition wouldn’t include the girls.
Meredith had filled the small table by the window with a variety of our favorite treats and stocked the mini fridge with our go-to drinks. After I changed into pajamas, we each made a plate of snacks, poured a glass of wine, and got comfy on our beds before we did our traditional ten-minute catch-up. I kid you not; we’d done this since we were seven. We met the summer when we were six and were attached at the hip. The next year, her mom and mine arranged a sleepover the night my family arrived in Seaside. We were both chatting a mile a minute, trying to tell each other everything that had happened since we saw each other ten months ago. Her mom sat us at the table with a plate of cookies and a timer between us. “When the timer goes off, it’s the other person’s turn to talk. You get ten minutes at a time.”
Since that night, we’d always started our visits with ten minutes each. No matter if we’d seen each other two weeks before or six months. Plus, we talked on the phone weekly and texted throughout the day. Honestly, life was so much easier for us as long-distance best friends now than it was in our childhood, thanks to technology.
“How was the drive up?” she asked as she tucked her chestnut curls into the pink silk sleep bonnet before securing it in place with a double-knotted bow. I thought the sleep bonnet was ridiculous when she sent it to me and assumed it would be a nightmare to sleep in, but it wasn’t, and she was right. My hair was so much more manageable when I didn’t wake up with knots and tangles.
“Not as much fun as it usually is with Amber. And I missed sharing the driving with someone and having someone to sing show tunes with at the top of my lungs.”
Her kind smile and soft chuckle were comforting after everything that had happened over the last couple of days. “Silent road trips suck. Did you substitute the musical playlist for a good audiobook?”
I shook my head as I swallowed the jalape?o-stuffed green olive before taking a sip of Riesling. “Oh, I still sang my show tunes. It was just a solo performance, and I’m sure anyone who saw me thought I had lost my mind. But I don’t care. I enjoy singing in the car. I do it every day. It doesn’t matter who’s watching. Jonas used to—” I let the sentence hang in the air. I knew we’d talk about everything soon, but not yet. I wasn’t ready.
After almost 50 years of friendship, Meredith knew me as well as I knew myself. She didn’t miss a beat and picked up the conversation. “It’s my turn to do the ten-minute recap first.” She unlocked her phone, opened her clock app, and started the timer. Then the speed talking began. “We’ll open at 10 am and close at midnight instead of 11 to 11. We figured the first hour wouldn’t be incredibly busy, but we had enough interest in it that we thought we’d try it. And I’m in at nine four days a week anyway to do paperwork, so it truly is no staff cost. I’ll work the first hour. If it’s busier than we expected, I’ll add some staff time. If not, no loss, really, because I’m already there. The three days a week I’m not in, Alex is in because, like me, he prefers to do the office side of running the business when it’s quiet.”
Meredith’s youngest is the only one who made Seaside his home. She was almost certain her third-generation family business would end when she decided to retire. But about two years ago, Alex told his mom he wanted to put his culinary training to work in the family business. He took over making the baked goods they used for toppings and created new recipes not only for toppings, but cones and ice cream flavors. He wanted to keep the family’s tradition of locally sourced ingredients while combining his love of unique flavor profiles. “How’s he liking his new role as manager?”
“Loves everything about it except managing staff schedules and payroll. I handle that. And when I leave, we’ll make sure he hires someone to take over that. That’s always fallen to someone in the family, so it will be new for us, but we’ll find someone great. When the time is right.”
Meredith had debated retirement for years. Probably as long as I did. But her divorce meant she didn’t have much else going on. She didn’t have someone to travel with and do all the things she thought she’d do once she retired, so she kept working and focused on the one thing that had been constant in her life—her family’s business. “And how are things besides business?”
“Vivian is living life as the carefree artist she was always destined to be. This summer in North Carolina will be good for her. She loves teaching and has always enjoyed summer camp. It’s sort of breaking my heart that she will miss the entire summer. It will be the first time only one of my kids is home for the festival. You’d think with four, I’d get at least two of them home. But Mikey has surgeries scheduled almost every day, and Nathan’s ship doesn’t get back to port until the beginning of October. I guess when you raise your children to chase their dreams, you don’t think about how they could end up scattered throughout the country. And for part of the year, around the world, depending on where Nathan’s ship is sent.” Meredith’s twins were born within weeks of PJ, even though she was due ten weeks after me. Being pregnant together was something we’d dreamed about as teens and were lucky to experience not once, but twice. Amber and Vivian were born four days apart.
Other than our children being the same age and essentially being second-generation best friends, our parenting experience couldn’t have been more different. Meredith was the type of woman who dropped everything when she became a mom and focused on her children. At times, I wish I could say I’d done the same, but I hadn’t. We had a nanny, and I continued to pursue my music career. Thanks to support from my in-laws, we always had help with the kids, and someone was always present at ball games, hockey games, piano recitals, orchestra concerts, and theater performances. I never even considered doing the stay-at-home mom thing. My best friend studied horticulture in college and planned to open a nursery in Seaside one day. She worked for a landscape design firm for a few years before getting married. Once she had the twins, she stopped talking about the nursery. Her new dream was to be home with the kids until they started school and then take over her family’s ice cream shop. Never being one to question someone’s motives for changing their career path, I never asked why, and instead simply supported her. The way she had me.
By the time her ten-minute timer went off, I had finished my wine and my plate was empty. It was my turn. “I don’t need the full ten minutes. PJ and Amber are both doing great. Amber is loving her job. She’s enjoying life as a newlywed. I adore Wyatt and couldn’t imagine a better husband for her. PJ is adjusting to his new role in the hockey world and no longer looks like a lost puppy since his time on the ice ended much too soon. My volunteer work keeps me busy, but not satisfied. I long to travel and start tackling the things on the retirement list Jonas and I wrote years ago. As I told you on the phone, I thought he was announcing his retirement, but instead, he announced to not only the fans but to me that he had accepted a new position running the family’s new foundation. So much for spending my retirement with my husband. He didn’t show up to our standing appointment with our therapist. Then he sent me to voicemail multiple times. So, I left him with an ultimatum. Show up in Seaside this summer, work on our marriage, or I want a divorce.”
Everything up to him not showing up to therapy wasn’t a surprise. She knew that. I’d told her on the phone that night as I cried myself to sleep. She spat her wine out. “Holy shit. What did he say?”
“I don’t know. I left a note on the kitchen counter. The same way he does to me before he heads off to a meeting or to travel with the team. Then I set his phone number to go directly to voicemail. If he wants to talk to me, he can come to Seaside. I made sure he, Amber, and PJ knew about our Ashland plans and how to contact me at the hotel. If it’s an emergency, he can reach me here. Anything else can wait until he gets off his ass and shows up.”
She reached her sun-kissed arm across the space between our beds and rested her hand on my knee. “How are you feeling about this?”
My eyes glossed with tears, and the waterworks I’d been holding back since I pulled out of my driveway rolled down my cheeks. “Terrified,” I admitted. “What if he doesn’t show?”
She moved to sit next to me. “We’ll figure it out together. Meredith and Anne Marie, friends who became summer sisters, and then lifelong sisters.”
My head fell to her shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Okay. I’m here when you do. Until then, I’m your source of distraction and entertainment. Junk food, wine, and movies are tonight’s offerings.”
“And tomorrow’s?”
“Shopping, a matinee, dinner, and an evening show.”
“Plus a phone call to Amber before dinner. I promised I’d call before she left on her honeymoon. They leave super early in the morning the following day.”
“Where are they going?”
“Bhutan.”
Her confused look matched mine when Amber and Wyatt told us their plan. “Where?”
“It’s in the Himalayas. They wanted something unique and not overly touristy. It was important to Amber not to have Wyatt recognized and followed around. You know she hates the attention that comes with our name, but now she’s married to one of the league’s star goalies. At first, she just wanted to rent a small cabin somewhere secluded. But Wyatt wanted a real vacation. He’s only traveled with hockey teams and really saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go somewhere just the two of them and see a place they may never get a chance to again. He did a lot of research and worked with a travel agent to plan a two-week honeymoon that my daughter is never going to forget.”
Meredith held her phone out toward me. She had done what I did and searched for photos of Bhutan on her phone. “Amber’s going to love this. He did good.”
“He sure did. He even told Jonas and the Caribou coaching staff that he would only attend the mandatory parts of the summer camp. His focus in the off-season is on his family. As the GM, I know Jonas hated that. He wants his rising stars at everything. But as her father, he loved it.” We sat in silence for a few moments before I added, “I’m a little more than a tiny bit jealous of my daughter. I remember a time when Jonas focused on family over the summer. And when he planned things for us. But for the life of me, I can’t remember the last time he did.”
Meredith knew I not only didn’t expect a response but didn’t want one. That’s what happens when you’ve been at each other’s side through everything, both good and bad, for close to five decades. You know what the other wants without saying it. Instead of responding with words, she handed me my wine glass from the nightstand and turned on my favorite movie.