Chapter Three
Tom reaches across the warm and rumpled sheets and pulls Diana close.
She draws circles on his forearm, his hair rough under her fingers.
He kisses her temple, trailing his lips down to her neck and then her shoulder, where he rests his chin.
She loosens her body against his and relaxes into a sort of melting contentment that happens only when he embraces her.
He murmurs; his message is indistinct. She fights her way through the layers of sleep to hear him. The words grow more insistent, and then they are clear.
“Mom, Mom!”
Diana groans and rolls over.
“Mom?”
She opens her raw and sticky eyes to Duncan standing next to her bed, wearing his parka and carrying his sneakers, a worried look on his face.
“Hey, honey.”
Too much wine last night, she thinks, her tongue darting around her dry mouth. And not enough sleep.
“Mom, it’s 7:36. Aren’t you supposed to be up for work by now?
” Duncan turns the bedside clock around so the red numbers blink in Diana’s line of sight.
She’s overslept by more than an hour. She pushes off the covers and sits up so fast she feels a sloshing in her head, as if her brain is swimming the breaststroke in her skull.
“Dammit, I have an 8:30 meeting. Where’s your sister?”
“Sleeping.”
“Okay, I got this.” Diana forces a smile. “Thanks for waking me up.” She heads toward the bathroom, calves still aching from yesterday’s run. “You better get going. You don’t need to be late, too.”
“Mom?” Duncan doesn’t move from his spot next to the bed. “What did Dad’s letter say?”
The letter, she thinks, looking at her bedside table. She stashed it in the top drawer only hours earlier. Phoebe might forget about it, but Duncan never would.
“He wanted me to tell you he loved you.” Diana grasps the doorknob for support. “And that the three of us were the best part of his life.”
She can’t tell Duncan all of it. She didn’t fall asleep until after 4:00 a.m., imagining what Tom did that was so bad he couldn’t tell her about it when he was alive.
Duncan purses his lips into a stiff line. She wants to wrap her arms around him, but she’s learned to wait for him to let her in.
“Can I read it?”
“The letter was for me. I’ve told you what he wanted me to share.”
Duncan twists his sneakers in his hands, the laces swaying.
“You should get going. We can talk about this later.”
“Uncle Evan’s taking me to that basketball clinic tonight. I’ll be home late.”
Since Tom’s death, Diana’s brother-in-law, Evan, has stepped in to help with Duncan, driving him to out-of-town games and taking him to buy new basketball shoes when, thanks to a substantial growth spurt, his old pair became too small.
The irony, Andrea pointed out, was that Evan hadn’t known a bank shot from a fast break when Tom died.
He learned, though, studying basketball websites to find ways to engage Duncan in shop talk during their drives from games in one eastern Massachusetts town to the next.
It was one of many ways Diana’s family built a safety net underneath her and her kids.
“We’ll talk tomorrow then,” Diana says. “I love you. Have a good day at school.”
Duncan slips out of her room without responding. She listens to the stairs creak under his feet and the front door open and close before moving into the bathroom.
Tom still hovers on the edge of her thoughts. Diana’s dream was so vivid she can still feel his body against hers, and the sensation makes her off kilter and jumpy.
Oversleeping doesn’t help either. She planned to get up early to prepare for her meeting with the library’s communications team, but that’s not going to happen. She’ll have to wing it.
After relieving her bladder and washing her face, Diana brushes her teeth, the bristles scraping against her gums, blood staining her toothbrush. She steps into the shower and trembles under the cold water, scrubbing away last night’s run and forcing herself awake.
Toweling off, Diana avoids glancing at herself in the mirror, certain if she does, she’ll see the deepening grooves in her forehead and the web of fine lines under her eyes.
She’s seen a worn version of herself for months.
Sometimes, when she remembers how she was before—more vibrant, more hopeful—she cries.
Back in her room, Diana checks the clock: 7:41 a.m. There isn’t time to do much with her shoulder-length, wavy hair, other than sticking it in a ponytail.
She opens her closet, avoiding looking to the left, where Tom’s clothes still hang.
Her mother used to urge her to clear out his belongings, but Diana said no every time Vivian brought it up. Eventually she stopped asking.
As if she’s aware Diana is thinking about her, Diana’s phone rings, and her mother’s face appears on the screen. Diana debates silencing the call, but Vivian will only call again and again until she answers.
“Mom, I’m running late for work. I can’t talk,” Diana says.
She puts the phone on speaker and rips the dry-cleaning bag off a pair of black wool pants and a beige cashmere sweater.
She has no idea when her mother took her clothes to the dry cleaner and placed them in her closet, though she appreciates the help.
“Sweetheart, I wanted to touch base about Family Dinner.”
Diana is scheduled to host her parents, Evan, Andrea, and their son, Noah, later in the week for what Vivian calls Family Dinner.
Even in texts and emails, she capitalizes both words, as if they’ve been trademarked or declared a national holiday.
Diana has completely forgotten about the dinner.
Finding a letter from my deceased husband will do that, she thinks as she takes her underwear, bra, and socks from the bureau under the window and begins to dress.
“I haven’t done any planning yet, Mom. I’ve been kind of slammed at work.”
Family Dinner began when Tom and Diana moved to Alcott.
Fed up with noisy neighbors and rising rents, they decided it was time to buy, and there was no better place to live than Alcott, near her parents and sister.
The two-story yellow house with the magnolia tree in the front yard was the last one they saw on a whirlwind tour of available homes, and Tom and Diana knew it was theirs as soon as they walked through the door.
Diana wrote a letter to go along with their offer, and their story—hometown kid looking to raise her own family in the place where she grew up—made them the winners of an intense bidding war.
The first Family Dinner was held the week they closed on their house.
Since Tom’s death, Vivian and Andrea have alternated hosting Family Dinner, while waging a low-level campaign for Diana to volunteer to do so as well, certain such a commitment would demonstrate she and the kids have overcome their grief.
Aware one dinner couldn’t possibly make Tom’s death any easier, Diana resisted their appeals.
That worked until two weeks ago, when her father called to ask if she might change her mind.
Vivian and Andrea had checkmated her; Diana could never say no to Francis.
“Let me make it easier for you, Diana.”
As she pulls her sweater over her head, Diana considers asking her mother to host. However, such a last-minute request would concern her family, and the questions would inevitably start: “Are you okay? Do I need to come over? What’s really going on?” She can’t handle that level of invasiveness.
“Maybe you could bring dessert?”
“I’ll make lasagna.”
“That’s too much. The host is supposed to do all the cooking.”
“Everyone loves my lasagna.”
Everyone does love her lasagna, Diana thinks as she zips up her pants. She doesn’t have time to continue this negotiation, and her mother will get what she wants anyway. “That would be great, Mom,” she says. “I really have to get going.”
Diana hangs up the call and selects earrings from the bedside table, next to the small blue dish where Tom dropped his loose change. It’s still filled with coins, now covered in dust.
A glance at the clock indicates it’s 7:48 a.m. As she clips in her earrings, Diana hustles to Phoebe’s room.
“Honey, wake up. We overslept.” Diana turns on the overhead light as she steps over a pair of panda-shaped slippers.
She finds Phoebe perfectly still under the covers, Bear Bear clutched in her arms, long hair covering her face.
“Pheebs? I can’t do this today. I have a meeting, and we’re late. I need your help.” Diana’s voice rises higher and higher. “Phoebe? Please.”
Phoebe squirms out from under her blanket. “Hi, Mama.” She opens her eyes and blinks. “You’re already dressed.”
“Did you hear me? We’re running late. I have to get you to Mira’s so I can make my meeting. I need you to get up and get dressed. Now.”
Diana adds the “now” for emphasis, but it’s lost on Phoebe, who, instead of getting out of bed, stretches her arms above her head. “I’m comfy, Mama.”
“Let’s go.” Diana opens Phoebe’s dresser to select her clothes: rainbow-striped leggings, a purple sweatshirt, underwear, and pink socks. She turns back to the bed to find that Phoebe hasn’t budged. “Phoebe!” Diana’s tone takes on a biting edge. “Get out of bed.”
Phoebe frowns but sits up, swinging her feet over the side of the mattress. “I want breakfast first.”
“Get dressed. I’ll make you a sandwich.” Diana gestures to the pile of clothes on the dresser. “I’m not kidding around, Phoebe.”
She runs down the stairs, stopping briefly to unearth both her boots and Phoebe’s from the pile in the front closet.
7:51 a.m. Nine minutes to get out the door.
Nine minutes. She grabs the ingredients for Phoebe’s breakfast, slathering peanut butter and jam on two slices of bread and smooshing them together.