When Laurel was a newborn, it had occurred to a horrified Annie that this pure and perfect infant would probably make some of the same mistakes Annie had: trust the wrong people, run headfirst into danger.
Thank goodness Laurel turned out to be more risk-averse than Annie had been. It was better to be a rule-follower, wasn’t it?
Although, sometimes Annie also thought that she would have at least understood a daughter like Sierra. Deb and Sierra Gallegos were besties—for Christmas they had gifted each other BFF necklaces with real diamonds. Even with all of the love between Annie and Laurel, Annie sometimes felt—
Not even a wedge. A hint of a wedge between them.
Does Laurel seem joyless, Annie sometimes asked Mike. Heavy?
In graduate school, Annie had learned about Jung’s collective unconscious and the theory that stress in one generation could alter the DNA of the next.
Laurel sees right through us, Annie would whisper to Mike. She knows my sins.
Mike knew his job in that moment was to bring Annie down to earth. She’s an observer by nature, he’d say. People are who they are.
Annie was willing to bet that Mike had forgotten where he’d first heard that little nugget of wisdom, but she never would. Thirteen years before, their labor and delivery nurse had been a woman who seemed to derive a large part of her identity from being a redhead. When she spotted Mike, sitting in the guest chair, she’d squealed with such glee that Annie assumed they’d grown up together.
“Fellow ginger,” she’d whooped, holding up her hand for a high five. Mike shot Annie a confused look and hesitantly returned the slap.
In a stage whisper, the nurse said, “Don’t tell anyone I said this, because I’m not supposed to play favorites, but there is nothing cuter than a red-haired baby. Nothing.”
Mike was more unnerved than Annie, who by Laurel’s birth, was inured to the fact that some people felt compelled to confess their wackiest truths to pregnant women, like they were all involuntary priests.
But when Laurel came out, all pale milky skin and jet-black hair, the nurse had looked at Mike, her lips pressed into a tight line. She’s lovely, she had finally said in a brisk tone that might as well have been an apology. People are who they are, after all.
Annie had lain on the hospital bed, annoyed less by the stings of the doctor’s stitches and by the fact that her midsection was an accordion squeezing out a tortured “La Vie en Rose” than by the nurse’s disappointment about Laurel’s hair color, which seemed to Annie like disappointment about Laurel.
She almost said something defensive about how perfect Laurel was, but pandering to the foot-in-mouth set wasn’t how she wanted to kick off motherhood.
It only occurred to Annie years later that this entire memory was less about the nurse and more about Annie’s own fears of Mike’s disappointment. Which was silly. He couldn’t have cared less, didn’t even react to the nurse’s comment about Laurel’s hair, was immediately besotted.
But of course he was. Mike was Mike. People are who they are.
Laurel had been born cautious and cerebral, while Hank had been born energetic and confident enough to push boundaries.
Just last week, Annie had come home from her walk to see him in the driveway, stripping a D-cell battery to find out what was inside. Mike’s mom, hearing the story, had reminded Annie that in all of his childhood pictures, Mike was in a cast or on crutches. A bandage and a giant smile.
They’re two peas in a pod, Mike’s mom had said.
Who would Laurel turn out like? Who was her twin pea?
But Annie should stop pegging her children. They were too young for it, and even if their personalities seemed predetermined, things changed.
And kids soaked up that stuff. Parents were flawed human beings, who for a few years there had all the power of gods. How you were treated, experiences, mattered just as much as disposition.
Take Lena Meeker.
Annie found it almost impossible to reconcile Lena now with the woman she’d seen on that summer night fourteen years ago.
Light on her feet, tendrils loose around her face, Lena had been a vision, gliding around the party in that seafoam-green dress with floaty layers. She was here, there. A hand on an arm, her head tossed backward, mouth open in laughter.
And Rachel?
It was almost impossible to assess.
Based on what Annie could glean online, Rachel Meeker was living a full life in Boston. She had a boring corporate job with one of those meaningless-sounding titles—vice president of operations and sales blah blah blah—and a fiancé.