Fifteen
Monday
Grace didn’t sleep. Again.
Her skin burned, her stomach still bloated with seafood and wine, and her head pounding with information she hadn’t been remotely prepared to hear, she lay on the springy mattress all night—physically uncomfortable in every possible way—rubbing the silver ring between her fingers and staring at the ceiling.
Not a single thing in her life had made an ounce of sense these last few days.
Not Caleb and his out-of-nowhere call. Not Adam and his vague wistfulness.
Not the girl on the beach, the one at the arcade, or the one in the bathroom who shouted “Surprise!” and nearly gave Grace a heart attack.
Not Ray and his confounding announcement, which—twist of all twists—might have actually been the most disconcerting item of them all. None of it.
What did Ray mean that Birdie told him Grace would be back on the island this week? Did he have a dream? Conjure up a memory that never happened? Or was he—just like her—grasping? For something. Anything. A sign. Some vague figment of imagination or hope?
And if so, why?
Early last August, a few weeks before the Maine trip, was the first time in several years that Birdie had brought up Sea Drift.
She’d been staying with Grace and Adam for a few nights, keeping her daughter company and helping to care for her after yet another pregnancy loss.
142Birdie knew what to do by that point.
As soon as she arrived, she pulled the heating pad down from the linen closet.
Lined Grace’s nightstand with a fanned-out stack of gossip magazines, a bottle of Advil, and one too many bags of gummy candy.
In a way, it was funny, like Birdie was setting Grace up for a sick day home from school.
Except that it wasn’t. What she was really doing was trying to comfort her as she once again said goodbye to a life she’d never get to have or to hold.
“So what should we watch, Cece?” Birdie had said on one of those nights and sidled up next to Grace in her spacious king-size bed.
Adam was stuck late in the city (Last-minute client meeting—I’m sorry!), which had begun to happen more around that time.
“I vote something incredibly mindless and yet completely addicting.” She adjusted Grace’s favorite weighted blanket, gave her a gentle nudge to encourage her to eat more of the homemade macaroni and cheese she’d prepared. “Any ideas?”
“Mom . . .” Grace said, not needing to utter another word, half of her and Birdie’s conversations happening by way of telepathy.
“I know, darling,” Birdie chimed in right away, scooting closer and extending her arms outward, like Grace was a little girl who needed to be held to feel safe.
“It’s awful. And it makes no sense. There’s not a thing medically wrong with you to explain any of this.
You’re always so cautious and responsible, reading labels, avoiding all the things you’re supposed to avoid.
” She gave her a tight squeeze. “It’s not fair, my girl.
You’ve done everything right. It’ll happen in due time, Cece.
Once you give yourself time to heal and talk to your doctor and you and Adam feel ready, you’ll try again. ”
Grace was so tired. Enduring loss after loss for no diagnosable reason felt torturous, like being trapped in a Groundhog Day story and never knowing if or when the time loop would end.
For years, she’d been fighting an invisible burden—time, or maybe fate, or just the unrelenting villain that goes by the name of Chance.
According to her physicians, it wasn’t a clinical obstacle, seeing as her anatomy (and Adam’s—they’d had him tested, too) worked fine.
143Though it sounded awful, she almost wished something were wrong, just so a doctor could say, “Here’s the problem,” then prescribe a clear way to fix it.
Instead, her trying-to-conceive experience had been like visiting her general practitioner when she was sick, hoping she had an ailment that necessitated an antibiotic versus a vague virus, the type of annoying and untreatable illness that required her to simply remain miserable while she waited to bounce back and feel like herself again.
“This wasn’t the plan,” Grace continued, and wept into her mother’s shoulder.
“Oh, darling, of course not.” Birdie pulled back, swept a strand of Grace’s hair behind her ear. “This isn’t anyone’s plan. I never experienced it, love, but I know it’s such an awful tragedy no person or couple should ever go through or—”
“It’s breaking us,” Grace said, the first time she ever admitted it, either out loud or to herself.
“It shouldn’t be, but it is. When we started dating, everything in both our lives was so neat and tidy.
I’d just signed with Mollie. Adam was moving up in his career.
We had the city and all that had to offer, and everything just felt so shiny.
It was like we were both the best versions of ourselves back then.
” She looked down, dabbed away some tears with a corner of the sheet.
“The problem is, I’m not sure we know how to be our worst selves with each other, too. ”
Birdie took her daughter’s hand. “You’ll figure out how to be,” she assured her, though her tone wasn’t entirely convincing.
“Will we?”
Birdie was quiet for a moment. It was no secret that she’d always been a bit skeptical of Adam.
Birdie liked him, though early on had questioned Grace about whether the reasons she did were too rooted in his looks-good-on-paper ways.
Birdie never outright said it, though she didn’t need to.
Deep down, Grace knew that, during moments like that one, her mother—just like her—privately wondered about a path not taken and what if.
144
“Did you and Dad need to figure out how to be that way with each other?” Grace finally asked through a sniffle and wiped her nose—a child in a grown-up’s bed.
“Oh, things with Dad and I were just, well, different sometimes, Cece.”
“How so?”
Birdie looked out the window. “We knew each other forever, honey. We grew up together, you know? He’d seen me at my best, my worst, and everything in between.” A pair of birds flew past the glass. “In a lot of ways, you and Adam are still busy building your own history.”
Grace set her half-full plate on the plush white comforter—the one she and Birdie had picked up together on a shopping trip at Bloomingdale’s that spring.
“This whole experience . . . it’s changed me so much, Mom.
And not necessarily in a good way.” The words caught in her throat, like someone was trying to hold them down.
“It’s not even just the pain of what I can’t have that’s killing me, but what it’s doing to my whole identity.
It’s all I think about, worry about, wonder about.
” She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, but the tears came anyway.
“I’m supposed to be writing a book right now about a happy young family, and every time I try to churn out so much as a single page, the only thought that flashes through my mind is that I don’t know these characters or understand their story at all.
” Grace paused, gave herself a second to catch her breath.
“This just isn’t the life I thought I’d have. ”
Birdie looked at her through kind eyes, an entire dialogue passing through their silence.
“Well, love, unfortunately, as your old, widowed mother knows firsthand, we don’t always get to choose the shape our lives will take.
” She rubbed Grace’s leg through the blanket.
“We make plans, Cece, and the universe—”
“Laughs,” Grace said, finishing her mother’s thought. “I wish it wouldn’t, though.”
A moment passed before Birdie conjured up a bright smile, her lips done up in her signature red, even then.
“How about one of those silly Hallmark movies?” She grabbed the remote from the nightstand.
“They’re airing a new one tonight that takes place at the 145beach.
” She clicked, finally landing on the right channel.
On the screen, a serious-looking businesswoman stood at a marina talking to an absurdly handsome fisherman type. “See! Told you!”
Grace chuckled, rested her head on Birdie’s shoulder. She gave her mother the courtesy of a few nonjudgmental minutes before she offered up her opinions. “Oh my God, Mom, this is so bad! I can already predict every twist and tell you exactly how it’ll end!”
“I know.” Birdie laughed. “That’s what makes it so good.”
They kept watching it anyway.
“Do you miss it?” Birdie asked a little while later as the main characters collapsed into each other’s arms and kissed. “The beach. Our beach. This month marks five years since we’ve been back.”
Grace sighed, but it made her abdomen hurt more than it already did. “I do.”
“I know, my girl.” Birdie waited before she uttered anything else. Just one more conversation by way of telepathy. Finally, she lifted Grace’s hand, pressed her crimson lips against it. “Me, too.”
“Mom?” Grace asked, not taking her eyes off the television screen. “Do you think we’ll be okay? In the long run? Me and Adam?”
Birdie breathed through her nose, her mouth shut tight.
“I think sometimes life hands us hard things. But I also believe whatever it gives you, Cece, you’ll come out okay on the other side of it,” she said, never actually mentioning Adam or their marriage in her response.
She nodded toward the TV. “And if all else fails, you can be like our leading lady here and run away to find yourself at the beach again,” she added with a wink.