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  At the table Paul has a beer open already and is cracking open one for me, too.

  “How are you two holding up?” I ask him.

  He grimaces a little. “Fine, I guess. We never should have told Pen so early. She only just stopped asking when the baby’s coming and why Mommy’s tummy isn’t big.” He flinches at this memory and takes a long pull from the beer. “Aims was just so excited, finally. We got pregnant with Penelope so fast we never thought . . . well. It will happen. We’re going to see a doctor next week, I guess.”

  “It’ll work out. Amy won’t rest until it does, if nothing else.”

  “No kidding.”

  Paul tips back in his chair and blinks up at the ceiling a few times. “Yeah. Anyway, you know what I heard?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Anna’s coming to the party at Mom and Dad’s.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “No, seriously, dude. Dad invited Maeve and her boyfriend, and Maeve said that was perfect because she could bring Anna.”

  “Ah. That means that Anna’s mom wants her to come. Not that she will come. Two different things.”

  “What else is she going to do on the Fourth? Sit in some stupid Holiday Inn room, or in that little shack of a house?”

  “Listen to you, big shot. They’ve fixed up that house.”

  “You know what I mean. Everyone else in town is going to go, including her mom, so she’ll either have to come along or sit and sulk all by herself. And you know Anna’s still single.”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Whatever. You live like a monk and there’s no reason to. It’s like you’re putting yourself in some kind of divorce jail. It wasn’t just your fault.”

  “Tell that to Sam, her family, and the whole town. I cheated, I’m the bad guy. Case closed.”

  “Well you can’t change that by going on a sex strike for the rest of your days.”

  Maddie’s voice pipes up. “What’s a seck stripe?”

  I whirl around in my chair. Maddie is behind us, her head cocked to one side, eyes narrowed as if she can decode those words in the air. She’s dragging a Barbie by the feet.

  “Never mind, Uncle Paul was making a silly joke.”

  “Tell me the joke. I like jokes.”

  “It’s a grown-up joke. What do you need, kiddo?”

  She pulls me out of the room to go fix a Barbie house elevator malfunction as Paul barely suppresses snorting laughter.

  I try to put the string-operated elevator back together as Maddie tells me a rambling story of what the Barbies are doing in their house today. My mind drifts to Paul’s comment about divorce jail. Yeah, I feel guilty and I damn well should.

  I was planning to walk out on my marriage, leave one woman for another, somehow expecting to keep quiet the “slept with my old girlfriend” part from my wife. As it turns out, I have no stomach for lying on that scale and with the slightest prompt I spilled it all to Sam, hanging Anna out to dry in the process, and agreeing, in the end, to try to save our marriage. Of course Anna wanted nothing to do with me after that stunt.

  Then Sam and I pulled the classic troubled-marriage blunder and had another baby.

  Finally the little plastic piece clicks back into place, pulling the string taut. I pull the Barbie elevator up smoothly. “All better,” I tell Maddie. “I fixed it right up.”

  She rewards me with a smile that shows both of her dimples, and throws her arms around my neck for a hug. Her hair smells like apple-scented shampoo.

  Chapter Three

  Tuesday, July 2, 2013

  Anna

  Haven, Michigan

  The flowers in front of my mother’s house spill out a riot of colors. Her garden, in fact, has extended far beyond the little strip of dirt in front of the porch where most of her neighbors have plunked some marigolds or daylilies. She has curved the garden out toward the road, creating raised beds with fountains, elf-sized bridges, and a “gazing ball,” which I used to call “idiot globe” when I was a snotty teen, because the shiny balls on concrete pedestals seemed so pointless to my know-it-all self.

  God, I was self-righteous. I must have been a terrible bore.

  My mom shoves open the door of her creaky Chevy and together we cross the velvety lawn. This little bungalow isn’t in the fanciest part of town, and she clearly puts more time and effort into curb appeal than her neighbors. But she radiates joy when she looks at it, so as far as I’m concerned, she can plant flowers on every square foot if she wants.

  The bungalow is a sunny yellow with a moss-green door and shutters. It’s hard to believe that this was once Cami’s tumbledown childhood home. She has been renting it to my mother these last five years for an amount that’s more symbolic than profitable. Cami didn’t want to live in it. Too many poignant memories. But she did want it saved, fixed up, looking beautiful the way her late mother would have wanted. It pleases her to know that part of her mother’s legacy is still here, being tended to lovingly.

  I say aloud, half to myself, “I wonder if Cami will want to move back after the baby? Make some new memories here. Have you guys talked about it?”

  Picked up for almost nothing in the real estate meltdown, Mailman Al’s home is a pretty, new construction house in Poplar Bluff. He always saved his pennies and never went into debt for much of anything, as opposed to most of the rest of the country. It’s a beautiful brick home just minutes from the lake, and there’s a pool in the development. It’s definitely “big enough for two” as Al had boasted at their engagement barbecue, his blue eyes twinkling, arm around his bride.

  My mother drops her purse on a console table just inside the door. “Well. I don’t know. We haven’t really.”

  “Cami is distracted, I’m sure. And you both have fixed it up so beautifully she could find a new tenant in two seconds.”

  My mother wanders toward the kitchen table and settles down gingerly, as if she’s afraid of hurting herself. Her gaze is out the window, where she can see her wild palette of flowers in every hue.

  “Mom?”

  “I don’t know if I can move.”

  “Oh! Well I’m sure you don’t have to. Al can move in here, of course.”

  Her hand goes automatically to her chest. This still happens, I’ve noticed, a reflexive reaching for her old wedding ring that used to hang on a chain inside her shirt all those years while she waited for my father to come back and claim her again. Finding nothing there, she instead begins to twist her engagement ring, which is a simple sapphire, and more than she’d wanted at all, having insisted to Al she didn’t need a gemstone ring, and that a simple wedding band would do.

  “He’d rather not, is the thing. He has rooms all set up there for his kids and grandkids when they visit, and their toys, and well . . . He doesn’t want to disrupt them, he says. The littlest ones only just got used to sleeping in those rooms instead of crying and fussing all night.”

  I join my mother at the table. “Oh. I suppose I can see that. But you think you can’t move in there?”

  “It’s just . . . this house.” She swallows hard and wipes her face under eyes, leaving tiny brown streaks of makeup. “It’s been my only real home.”

  I swallow down a stab of anger at my father. Instead I cover her hand with mine and squeeze. I’m trying to get used to giving physical affection these days, because I know my mother appreciates it.

  “It’s not the same as being forced out of the store. This is a happy occasion. Al loves you.”

  “My flowers.”

  “Think of the enormous, beautiful garden you can plant there.”

  My mother pulls her hand back, folds her arms and snorts. “It’s a development. They have rules. Only so many square feet and crap like that.”

  “And Al won’t move here?”

  My mom shakes her head.

  “You’ll work it out, Mom, I’m sure. What does Al say?”

  “He doesn’t know it’s a big deal. I haven’t told him yet.”

  �
�Don’t you think you’d better? Mom, you’re getting married in five days.”

  “Four if you don’t count today. And anyway, just because we get married doesn’t mean we have to move right that minute. I haven’t even packed a single box and he knows that. He can’t be expecting me to close up this house the minute we say ‘I do.’ Maybe there will be a little . . . transition time. That’s all. Oh! You must be starving! Listen to me, some mother I am, not even feeding you after that long train ride. I made some egg salad just the way you like it and I’ve sliced up fresh vegetables.”

  And she’s off, bustling around the small, sunny kitchen, the only hint of our talk being a slight brown smudge under her eyes.

  I can hardly believe my mother is fixing to get married and remain living separate from her husband—just as she did, rather against her will, for twenty years hitched to my absent father.

  *

  Aunt Agatha’s boutique has become one of my favorite places in all of Haven. It’s unapologetically old-fashioned, just as Agatha herself. Doilies drape everywhere, quaint instrumental music wafts out of tinny speakers, and rose-scented potpourri tickles the nose. Faceless white mannequins pose with wedding gowns and prom fashions, leaning backward at the hips as no real person ever does in life.

  So much has changed, and this place has not, and for that I’m ever more grateful with each passing year.

  I do a double-take to see Mailman Al—I really should stop thinking of him that way—follow us into the store. “Maeve! It’s been too long. Almost a whole hour since I’ve seen your face.”

  He plants a smooch right on my mom’s cheek and for this I have to look away. It might be cute, but it’s also my mom and it’s all the more nauseating. It also makes me feel nervous to see Al so demonstrative. It’s a spooky echo of my dad at his best: over the top, affectionate, and jocular. It was for this version of Robert Geneva that my mother held out all those years, wearing her wedding ring under her shirt.

  I hadn’t known Al had it in him, until lately. He was just the guy with the mail and a pleasant smile. Retirement and engagement have done wonders for him, I guess. Or he was always this way and I’d never noticed. You get to know people in their roles and you begin to imagine that’s all there is to see.

  Agatha strolls out of the back room and I swallow back a gasp. She’s aged so much in the last five years. She intended to retire back then, but instead hired my mother to help her with the alterations her own arthritic hands could no longer manage. Today, of course, my mother is not here as an employee. Today she is a customer. A bride.

  “Maeve! Lovely to see you. Al, it’s rotten luck for you to be here, you know.”

  “Oh, I won’t stay for the big reveal. But we’re having lunch at Doreen’s and I couldn’t resist popping in to see my girl. Luck though, pssht. I didn’t see my first wife in her wedding dress either and she went and died of cancer before we got to retire, so don’t talk to me about superstition.”

  Al’s comment has thrown a black cloak over the room, but jovial still, he doesn’t notice. His wife passed so long ago, maybe he’s woven her loss into the fabric of his life and the fact of her death fails to jar him. Or maybe he’s faking it. With enough practice, a person can seem stoic about damn near anything.

  My mother has gone quiet and still. She looks thoughtful, her gaze somewhere on the carpet in front of her shoes. Al kisses her goodbye, announces he’ll be waiting for her at Doreen’s, and he whistles his way out of the room. It takes me a moment to place the tune. Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married . . .

  “Well,” Agatha says, clapping her hands once. “Shall we?”

  My mom swallows hard and follows her to a dressing room. I perch on one of the little couches around a raised platform near the center of the store. About the only thing I can look at is my own reflection in the giant three-paneled mirror across from me. I look so much like my mother. My penny-colored hair doesn’t have threads of gray yet. My skin is somewhat smoother—no longer dewy with youth, either—but the curls, the freckles; even my posture echoes Maeve Geneva.

  I’m not often susceptible to bridal daydreaming, but sitting here surrounded by the gowns, the jewelry, the display of pointy white shoes . . . even I succumb to a wistful sigh. If only . . . If only what? If only my marriage examples hadn’t been such rubbish. My parents’ marriage was a farce. My best friend Cami’s father turned into a raging abusive drunk when his wife died young. And how many young marrieds at the law firm crumbled under the weight of partner-track workload? And now I spend two-thirds of my working life helping people split up.

  If only Beck—no. That train of thought leads nowhere good.

  My mother is right. It is odd to be the daughter, sitting on the couch, waiting for my fifty-something mom to come out in her dress. It stirs up odd thoughts, too. I suck in a deep breath and huff it out, trying to bring myself back to the present happy occasion.

  And here she comes.

  “Oh, Mom. Oh, it’s stunning. Just beautiful.”

  It’s a cream-colored sheath style dress. The V-neck bodice features a top layer of diaphanous fabric that knots at the center of her bosom, and then wraps around her waist where it falls to the ground, with a tiny bit of train. The skirt is a creamy silk that skims the top of her feet with a slit just to the knee. It’s the perfect blend of romantic and attractive, of dignified yet pretty and bridal.

  Agatha leads my mother to the raised platform. Mom keeps her shining eyes on me, instead of turning around to see herself. Agatha flutters around her, fluffing out the train, picking off invisible pieces of lint.

  “Your mother designed this,” Agatha declares with all the pride of a mother herself. “I did the fitting and machine sewing, but the fine work she did herself. If I thought she’d ever leave Haven I’d sign her up for Project Runway.”

  My mom chuckles, still not turning around. Finally Agatha takes her shoulders and steers her to face herself. She gasps, and puts a hand to her chest. Agatha turns to me. “We’re going to pin just a flower in her hair. Maggie at Haven Floral already tested it out and it’s going to look great. This dress doesn’t need a lot of fuss, does it?”

  I’m not listening carefully though, because Mom looks pale. Her freckles stand out bright, like spangles against her pinkish skin. I rise to stand by her, worried about her blood pressure. Back in the waning months of the store, she’d once collapsed right in the aisle from a blood pressure spike.

  Finally Mom seems to remember that we’re here, we are waiting for a reaction. “It is lovely, isn’t it? Feels wrong somehow to praise my own work. The sin of pride, my mother would say.”

  Agatha snaps, “She’s dead, so who cares. Sorry, love, that was harsh.”

  Mom laughs, sounding a little relieved. “No, you’re too right. Who cares, indeed? Well. Let’s get out of this thing before I break into a sweat and ruin it.”

  Once we make it to the sidewalk, I stop Mom from zooming off to lunch by placing a hand on her arm. “Mom? Are you all right? What was wrong back there?”

  “Wrong? Nothing at all.” Her laugh is high-pitched and strange.

  “Mom.”

  “I guess I’m a lousy liar.” She squints past me in the July sun. “It’s just . . . The first thing I saw when I looked in that mirror was your father next to me. I know, it’s ludicrous and I don’t want him back, I promise. But when we first met, got engaged, I imagined being his bride and it never got to happen. We had to run off and elope because my mother was so angry, and we didn’t have any money ourselves for a wedding. I just wore a sundress and we were on the courthouse steps and for years I tried to convince myself it was romantic that way. Instead it turned out to set the tone for the whole marriage. Everything we ever had was makeshift, jury-rigged, and temporary plans that turned permanent.”

  She looks at me fully, and reaches up to touch my face, startling me again with how much taller I turned out to be. I forget this all the time, living so far away. “Except you, da
rling. You were the one perfect thing we made together and for that alone, I have no regrets at all.”

  *

  Mom tried to include me for lunch, but I can’t get used to this particular triad yet of me, my mother, and her boyfriend, now fiancé. I waved her off instead, but as soon as I did, I found myself at loose ends.

  So I settled on the sunny side of a street bench next to a tree, enjoying the balmy warmth. The old Nee Nance Store is just a couple of blocks away. I could go visit the new place, maybe even ask to go upstairs and see my old room. It was a little nook with a gabled roof and its own octagon-shaped window. It’s probably gutted, though. Torn up and rehabbed into offices, or maybe a swank studio apartment suitable for living above a shop that sells fancy olive oil. That was rather the point of evicting us, after all.

  My phone chimes as a text comes in. I shade the screen and squint at it. It’s Poor Divorcing Michelle. In a moment of sentiment before I left, when I fielded her call during a quick stop to the office, I’d given in to her sniffling request to share my cell phone number, in case of emergencies. Of course, when your entire life is being ripped in half by a bitter divorce, when your kids hang in the balance, every single thing is an emergency. Anyway, her husband has been such a bullying asshole, she needs all the help she can get.

  “Oh shit,” I say aloud, causing an older tourist with silvery hair to huff in my direction as she passes. I pull a face at her retreating back before I tell Michelle that I’ll get a hold of her husband’s lawyer and make him comply with the temporary custody order. It’s her turn with the kids, and he won’t bring them over. It’s a classic tune in the divorce repertoire.

  The husband’s attorney is a decent enough sort of guy and when I call with my Stern, Indignant Lawyer Voice (patent pending) I’m sure he’ll make his client get with the program. It could be worse. The bullying husband could be my client.

  I heave myself up from the bench and go back to my mom’s car, so I can perform this rant in private.