Chapter 28
With every turn carved, every snowflake tracked, my mind, my muscles, my soul—they search me, every crevice, all over the mountain.
Seeking direction and understanding. My body is strong in the skis, fast as a bullet.
And like a siren, my mom sings down every run.
The flats and the blacks, the jumps and the hills, she flies. Her knee is flawless. Whole and healed.
Somehow, here, I believe I’m on my way too.
Even though I’m buzzing with awareness—like never before—that every one of us in the universe lives on a timeline. We all have beginnings, middles, endings. Points along the way that shape and change us irrevocably. I’ve simply been given the unthinkable gift of seeing another timeline play out.
I don’t hate where it’s headed right now, back with my mom, back on the trajectory of my dream career—but I can’t ignore the greater truth of how I know it could be. With my family, flaws and all. We could fix what might break us, before it’s too late.
After our final ski run, in line for the train back to our hotel, I reach into my pockets for ChapStick. But my fingers brush foil. I pull out the Twix wrapper.
That little boy.
In three more months after my twenty-sixth birthday, Max would be born, one of the best gifts of my life.
Motherhood.
Him.
Everything.
I clench the wrapper, closing my eyes, begging for guidance and peace. But I’m starting to see it, I think. I’m starting to see what I want.
Not just any kids, but mine.
Not just any man, but mine.
But how can I find them?
Your unsettled spirit brought you here. You can only go back if you are certain that your old life is what you want. Any information will have to be discovered by you.
On the train back to the village, staring out the frozen window, I fear I’m increasingly lost. My eyes don’t even process the views, the miles of breathtaking wonder.
All I can see are the five of us, piled in our bed last Mother’s Day morning, “Girl on Fire” blaring from the surround sound.
Reid belted the words and danced with surprisingly Usher-like moves.
The celebration was a rare beam of hope on the calendar amid a line of dim birthdays.
The tray of breakfast, homemade cards. Max at the edge of the mattress, watching with hooded eyes as he picked lint off the comforter, with us even when he hated to be.
He wrote me a card:
Thank you for being my safe place, Mom. You always let me be myself. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.
I swallow now, pulling at my jumpsuit collar, red-hot.
Both feet on the ground—
And she’s burnin’ it down . . .
I don’t know how yet, but I’m almost certain I know what I need to do.
I start praying that God will honor my desire to seek my end to this game. If he and the process determine my readiness to return . . . how on earth can I get there?
Get ready?
How can I prove that it’s what I really want?
How can I be sure myself—entirely, undoubtedly sure?
I don’t know, yet.
But I’m coming for you, my babies.
Mom’s coming.
“Are you okay?” my own mom asks me.
The fireplace in our hotel suite crackles, the soundtrack to our decadent room-service meal.
Endive salads with poached salmon, truffle mac and cheese, fresh-brewed iced tea.
We’re living like queens on this trip. Speaking of which, I’m back in my sumptuous robe and have decided I’m never taking it off.
“Of course I’m okay,” I say, full of lies. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You seem distracted.”
Curled on the couch next to her, I can’t imagine what she is talking about. My Google history from the last half hour burns with incrimination.
Reid Layne.
Remembering Paris, meeting that little blond boy on the mountain, fearing any forever besides the one I’d been building with my little family for almost twenty years, since my twenty-first birthday the first time . . .
I can’t stop thinking of getting them back.
Hunting them down.
Finding Reid must be the answer out of this mess.
It has to be.
Right?
There are thousands of Reid Laynes, it turns out. Real estate agents, attorneys, fiancés with registries. Reid Layne Finance. Nothing. Reid Layne Los Angeles. Nada. He’s not even on LinkedIn, because it was me who finally made him one.
Wait!
Should I just try calling his phone number?
Why haven’t I thought of this yet?
The number you have dialed is no longer in service . . .
That’s right. We opened new lines together as newlyweds in a show of adulthood after extricating ourselves reluctantly from our family phone plans.
I even tried googling Tabitha Layne family. Society pictures and interest pieces scattered the web, but no details about her two handsome boys. I smile, though, remembering the recent sighting.
Tabitha reminded me so much of my grandma.
I shrug. “I miss Grandma.” It isn’t a lie. I miss her more than Mom knows. The big stroke won’t happen for years. “I wish she could be here.”
Still use her vocal cords.
Taste See’s Candies.
Give me much-needed advice.
Mom smiles, digging a spoon into chocolate mousse. “You think I’m a good skier. You should’ve seen her back in the day.”
“I can only imagine.”
The clear balloons float into my mind just then.
I wish I could see her again, my grandma. Before. Rewound. Stately elegance, sharp wit, incomparable wisdom.
But then I remember.
Twenty.
The cookie jar.
I sit up and drop my phone.
What else could it mean?
I drag my gaze to my Louis Vuitton tote, resting on the room’s antique desk. Under my wallet, next to my makeup bag, nestled in the tote’s corner.
Pink, pocked with holes.
Leaning over the coffee table, I peer once more into my mom’s young face, this glimpse of the past and look at my future, the woman who’s given me everything.
I need just a little more time with her.
“Mom,” I say, my tone level.
Mouth full of chocolate, she licks her lips. “Yes?”
“I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, honey.”
“Can I . . . ask you something?”
“Anything.” She winks. “It’s your birthday.”
Anything, huh?
I sip my iced tea, running my eyes over her face, taking in the woman who raised me. What do I want to know from her?
Anything.
“You’re fifty-one now,” I start. “Going on thirty with that skin. Whew! But I want to know, genuinely . . . What’s been your favorite age? As a woman? When have you felt most alive? Most full of joy? What’s been the best time in your life?”
Wistfulness colors her countenance.
“What a great question.” She leans back into the tufted chair and sets her spoon down, eyes sparking. “Let’s see.”
I wait, newly ravenous for her thoughts.
“I think the answer will surprise you,” she says finally.
“What, twenty-six?” I joke. “Am I peaking?”
“Hardly!” She laughs. “No offense. You’re still so young. And with age comes wisdom. And confidence.”
“So,” I say. “Let me guess. Fifty-one, and it keeps getting better?”
“I hope!” she says, pulling the thick robe tighter around her torso. “But you know what? I think I have to say forty. I loved being forty. I loved everything about it.”
I don’t expect my heart to lurch at that answer.
Forty.
The tick of the clock I’d been dreading.
The whole birthday wish gone awry that brought me here.
“Forty.” Be cool. “Really?”
She nods, reaching to pour herself a cup of hot decaf. “You want some?”
“Please.”
“Forty is special because you’re still young.
Your body is young, your friends are young, your children are young.
But you have the chops. The swagger. The spine!
” She hands me my steaming mug. “The feeling of being settled, but with the rest of your life ahead of you at the same time. Forty . . . set something free in me.”
I smile.
Freedom.
“I love that. And did the”—How do I put this?—“physical aging start to bother you at that point at all? Feel scary? Over the hill, as they say? Or does it even bother you now? Gosh, you seem so impervious to the vanity. Not that it hurts that you look like Cindy Crawford.”
She guffaws. “I’m a woman! Of course it gets to me.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” She stretches the skin of her neck until she looks like a crazy bird.
“No one talks enough about the neck. It starts to just hang. We really do turn into old hens. And then—” She pulls open her robe at the V of her chest. “The spots!” She rubs the skin.
“This used to be beautiful silky freckle-free skin. Now it’s leather.
Speckled leather. So we’re birds and cheetahs at the same time. ”
“Fine leather, though.” I’m cracking up. “And we love our cheetah print.”
“You bet we do!” she agrees. “Honestly, Sutton, there’s no end.
The things we can nit and pick and try to reverse or avoid.
But the truth is, we’re all getting older.
” She swirls her coffee. “I decided around forty to embrace it the very best that I can. To own my season. And I really paused to think about how I wanted to spend my time—and my money. Did I want to spend it on antiaging? Or living?”
“Whoa,” I say, moved by the thought. “Trademark that, Mom. So good.”
She shrugs. “We’re all just trying our best. The women like me who skip it all—and the women at sixty with facelifts who look incredible.
Don’t forget that. We’re all the same inside, to some degree—women.
We all walk through time, year after year, every single one of us facing the mirror and the challenge of loving ourselves. ”
“Even you,” I marvel.
“Yes, even me, silly girl.”
I wonder already what my twin girls would say about me. Do they see a woman who loves herself, or someone with contentment always hovering just out of reach?
“Thank you, Mom,” I say to her while I have the chance. “Thank you so much.”
“For what?”
“For being you,” I say simply. I measure my words, thinking now of Max.
“For being my safe place to land. You always let me be me.” Through everything, literally everything.
“And you do that, truly, by being you. I can’t tell you how much it means.
That you are so free in your own skin. And so wonderful. I hope I grow up to be just like you.”
She reaches out for my hand, eyes glistening.
We’re beholding the loveliest moment when out of nowhere, hand on her chest, she blurts, “I had a boob job scheduled once.”
The admission practically smacks me right off the sofa. “Say what now, Mother?”
She leans over. “You’re old enough to know now. Happy birthday! You were around thirteen, and well—I’d just had it. With these banana-pancake excuses for breasts!”
“Mom!” Tears of laughter leak from my eyes.
“So, I did it. I had the consultation. I picked the whole—you know—set. The shape and size. It’s quite amazing what they can do. It’s like shopping for shoes! So specific. Anyway, I made the appointment.”
She’s definitely never told me this. “And what happened?”
“Honestly?” she asks.
“Honestly.”
“I went to my stupid Bible study the day before the surgery was supposed to happen.”
I search upward for lightning to strike. “Mom, I don’t think you’re supposed to say stupid Bible study.”
She shushes me. “Well, I had this whole plan! And then the topic—that day of all days—was loving ourselves the way we are. How God made each one of us as his masterpiece.” She sighs.
“It was all about beauty from within. Our bodies being temporary. Modeling womanhood. Shoot, if that’s not a sign, what is?
Obviously, I couldn’t go through with it. ”
I’m still a puddle of shock. If there were a line of ten thousand women in order of most to least likely to get breast augmentation, my mom would bring up the rear, every time. “Mom, how have you never told me this?”
“Well—I also thought about you,” she says.
“My daughter. In the eleventh hour. Like it or not, I knew if I had the surgery, for better or worse, you’d notice.
We’d discuss it. It’s not a wrong or right thing to do, of course.
More than half of my friends have them. No judgment, ever.
But if there was even a shadow of a chance that my daughter might think of herself as less than perfect because of something I did, then personally I couldn’t go through with it. ”
I let this sit. “Wow.”
“Yes, wow,” she says. “Now you know. If it wasn’t for Bible study, I’d be sitting here with the most perky, beautiful—” She mimes her hands into two mounds, and I throw my head back, dying.
When the hilarity settles, I peer at her closely. I take in every sign of both her youth and her age, bubbling before me in a cocktail of the most effervescent wife, woman, and mother I’ve ever known.
My beloved mom.
Hearing her wisdom has me yearning even more for her mother.
Grandma.
Our great love.
She’s someone I sense holds even more answers for me.
I walk over to my mom, wrap her in my arms, inhale her musky perfume.
“I’ll never forget this trip,” I say into her hair. “Thank you. I love you.”
So much.
“Thank your dad, too,” she says, leaning back, eyes dancing. “He insisted we do this. Or else.”
I smile. “I bet he’s relieved I finally landed a real job, huh?”
She frowns, head cocked. “Not at all. You’re his favorite actress. His favorite international preschool teacher. He brags about you, everywhere, whatever you do—honestly, it’s embarrassing.” She reaches to tuck a piece of my hair. “He just wants you to be happy.”
I nod at this reverently, swallowing, and we sit there together a few beats more until I know it’s my time to go.
“Well, on that note!” I say. “I—”
Need to get my purse to the bathroom without being weird.
“—need to go change my tampon. Bet you don’t miss that at fifty-one, ha!”
I sidle toward my designer tote in the corner like a shifty maniac, without a second’s worry over what she thinks I’m really doing. I need to act fast before I decide to stay—because this trip, and this moment, are everything.
Turning forty.
Motherhood.
Clarity.
Everything.
I grab my whole purse and beeline to the beautiful bathroom.
Door shut, first I fish out my phone and tap to the name that’s been floating like snow at the edge of my consciousness over the last couple days. Dad. I see that I haven’t texted him in a few months and tap out a message:
Hi Dad! I love you so much, and I miss you with all my heart. I just wanted to say thank you—not only for this trip and letting Mom come with me, but for everything. You work so hard, and you lead with love, and I’m just so lucky to have you. I want to be just like you when I grow up. XO! Me.
Then I’m staring into the mirror, squeezing my pickleball.