She pointed at me decisively. “Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. They weren’t even married. If they were married, he wouldn’t have done that.”
Meredith and I had always had different logic on this particular matter, so we would agree to disagree.
She sighed. “And it’s more than that. She will take him back. She always does. And he will go after her. Because he always does. This is their pattern, falling apart and being flung back together. They love the drama of it all, the romance. They can’t live together, but they can’t be apart. In a week I’ll be getting a phone call that they’re getting married after all, and I’ll have to call everyone back and put this whole thing together again.”
It wasn’t particularly untrue what Meredith was saying. I had received more sobbing and gleeful phone calls from my granddaughter about this particular boy than I would like to say. I suppose I always assumed she would eventually get out from under his spell, that she would see that she deserved something steady, someone who would bring her peace. But I had to consider that maybe peace wasn’t what she wanted. Maybe peace wasn’t ever a part of the plan. The idea of those two getting together again was beginning to give me a headache. “It will all work out, one way or another” was all I could say. But even I didn’t know if that was true.
Then I had a thought that made me chuckle.
Meredith glared at me. “What could possibly be funny about this?”
I composed myself enough to say, “Just the thought of poor Alice trying to put this wedding back together again.”
“What if Alice decides Hayes and Julia need to release those ridiculous doves at the ceremony and one gets loose in the church again?” Now Meredith began to chuckle.
“Can you imagine if they had gotten married?” Tears were coming out of the corners of my eyes now. “Bird droppings were everywhere!”
When we had laughed away all our sorrow, I looked around the room, noticed how unthreatening it seemed in the light of day. It was only at night that the fear started. I’d tried to convince myself that it was ridiculous. This had been my home with the man I loved for decades. I had raised my children here, hosted Easter egg hunts for my grandchildren, laughed as they slid down the banister. I had held Julia’s engagement tea here, for heaven’s sake.
But it wasn’t my home anymore. Not with Reid gone. Alone in the dark of night, I felt terrified, panicked. Every creak of the floor, groan of the wind, chime of the grandfather clock, sent my heart racing into my throat. And I decided that now was as good a time as any.
“Meredith, I need to talk to you about something else.”
She looked tired, which I guessed was a suitable way for a woman whose child just left her fiancé at the altar to look.
“Is it serious? Because I can’t handle anything else today.”
I nodded. “Then it can wait.”
She sighed and got up, starting her pacing again. But after a few moments, she stopped. “No. Now I have to know.”
“You know how my friends Judy, Annie, and Fred have all moved into those lovely little apartments?”
Those lovely little apartments were part of a graduated senior living facility where one could buy an apartment or town home, then move to assisted living when the time called for it. Many of my friends’ children had practically driven them there with a cattle prod. I was having the exact opposite experience—I wanted to go. Meredith and her sister, Alice, might not agree on much. But they were united in the fact that this was our family home, I was only eighty and in great shape, and I should not give up my house.
“Yes, Mother,” Meredith sighed. “I know your friends have enjoyed Summer Acres. But Judy has Parkinson’s, Annie is nearly ninety, and Fred’s children were practically flinging him out the front door so they could have the house.”
All of that was true. But what was also true was that once their spouses were gone, my friends’ homes held heartache instead of happiness.
“Well, would you and Alice not like to have my house?” I asked, amused.
Alice had made no bones about wanting this house for her family someday, and I had to think the extra money Meredith would receive when her sister bought her out would lighten the financial burdens that she and Allen faced—especially now that they had paid for the wedding that wasn’t. She never confided much in me about the causes of their separations, but she swore it wasn’t someone else for either of them. Meredith loved her position with the city, but Allen had had difficulty maintaining a job over the last decade, and they certainly led a two-income lifestyle. I couldn’t think of anything much more stressful than that.
“Why do you always give her what she wants, Mother? Why? She’s so conniving and you just keep bowing down to her.”
“She isn’t conniving. She’s just high-strung.” I knew Meredith was hurting over her daughter’s pain, so I gave her some grace. But Alice had worked herself to death to create a perfect wedding weekend for Meredith and Julia, and I didn’t think that should be discarded. I also knew she knew what was coming next, and it was breaking her heart. “Sweetheart, please come sit down beside me.”
She sat reluctantly. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said. “You’re moving. I just don’t quite understand it.”
She didn’t need to understand it. Only I did.
“And I suppose Alice will be moving in here?”
“I suppose she will.”
She nodded. “Fine. That’s fine.”
Later that evening, I hugged my daughter goodbye and went back to my bedroom to make a plan on how to organize my things to move. As I was going through my dresser drawers, sorting through items to keep, toss, and donate, I imagined what Reid would say if he were here now, what he would think about me giving up the home we had shared for so long. But he wasn’t here. And, like my granddaughter, I had a responsibility to do what I thought was best, no matter what Meredith said.
I smiled as I pulled a worn fraternity pin from the top drawer, cold and heavy in my hand. Much of the gold plate had chipped to reveal dull, dark metal standing in its place. In some ways, it reminded me of myself. Different, changed, faded. But, underneath, that pin still held every magical feeling that it had the night I had received it, the week before my wedding—albeit from a man I did not marry. It still held the promise of something that couldn’t be seen with the eye but could be remembered by every cell. It was a pin that made me think; a pin that made me wonder what might have been. Not what could be. No. It was too late for that now.
Holding that pin was a tangible reminder of a hard-won lesson: There comes a time in every woman’s life where she must put her own happiness first. I was learning that lesson a little late. I would make sure my granddaughter didn’t suffer the same fate.
JULIA Off Schedule
A getaway-car scene is dramatic, and I liked the statement it made, something I wasn’t brave enough or bold enough to actually say out loud: I wasn’t coming back. But as I looked out the back seat window, I remembered how devastated Hayes had looked the first night I met him, the night his mother had left him. I couldn’t just run away with no explanation, could I?