When Phoebe and I tried to imagine our lives, we found it hard to imagine that we’d ever be thirty, much less forty, but we did conjure great futures for ourselves—she living in a funky old brownstone in Manhattan, showing her canvases at high-end galleries. There would be articles in glossy magazines about her and photos of her ever-so-hip self in her loft studio. I would be an actress, and we would go to each other’s openings, and toast with champagne and tell each other everything. We pinkie swore to never give up our careers for a guy.
But Phoebe did. I was so upset that she’d let Derek talk her out of finishing art school, that she’d drop out to be a wife and mother instead of sticking to the path she’d imagined for herself, that I couldn’t leave it alone, even when she asked me to respect her wishes. Beryl, too, was distraught, but even both of us talking ourselves blue didn’t make any difference. Phoebe insisted she knew what she was doing. Looking at Jasmine, reading her book in the soft yellow light cast by a lamp, I think maybe she did.
If I’d been able to keep my daughter, I wouldn’t have gone to New York. I wouldn’t have been auditioning. I wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had.
If Phoebe had come to New York with me, she would never have met Derek, never had Stephanie, and the wonder who is Jasmine would not exist. The thought gives me an actual, physical pang.
Maybe it’s impossible to play the what-ifs backward. Life takes the path it takes.
Jasmine and I are making toast when Phoebe knocks. “That must be Nana,” I say, licking jam from the tip of my finger.
“Yay! She can eat breakfast with us!”
I open the door to Phoebe, and it’s obvious something is wrong. “What is it?”
She glances at Jasmine, who is giggling at the seagull cocking his head and trying to coax her to come outside and give him food. “Close the door. I want to show you something.”
“Jasmine,” I call over my shoulder, “stay put. We’ll be right back.”
Maui jumps up to go with us, but Phoebe says, “Stay,” and points to the floor. Alerted by something in her voice, he sinks to the ground, but his ears and shoulders are alert.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. I lower my voice. “Did something happen with Ben? I mean, he seems—”
“It’s not that.” She walks down the driveway, gesturing for me to follow, and then stops. Points back to the house.
There, on the side of the house in bright-red paint, is the word WHORE in letters two feet high. My gut drops, and I think of Maui, warning me. “Damn.”
“We need to call the police.”
A sense of creeping dread crawls up my spine, the backs of my arms, raising gooseflesh. “When we got back from the beach last night, Maui was acting really weird.”
“What do you mean?”
“He ran out here, and sniffed around, and then howled”—I gesture at the trees—“but I couldn’t see anything amiss. So we went inside and locked everything up.”
“Holy shit,” she says. I’m braced for her to yell at me over not keeping Jasmine safe, but instead she says, “They must have come back. Did Maui give any other warning?”
I have to think about it. “No, not that I can think of. We were just reading and listening to music.”
She touches my arm. “I’ll call the police.”
A fine trembling has started in my veins, and before it can turn to visible tremors, I go back inside and sit down at the table with Jasmine, forcing myself to only look at the seagull. He has a striped tail, not quite black but darkest gray. Yul Brynner has hopped up on a stool inches away from the bird and is making hiccupy hunting sounds that make Jasmine laugh even more. “What is he doing?”
Focus on the now.
“He is under the mistaken impression that he could take that gull down.”
“Like kill him?” Jasmine asks, eyes wide.
“He can’t,” I say as reassuringly as possible. “That gull is bigger than he is, but cats like hunting.”
“Does he ever catch other birds?”
“No.” I pick up my toast and think about taking a bite, but the bright-red paint floats across my vision and I set it back down. “He’s an indoor cat. He does sometimes catch mice or bugs.”
“Aw! Poor mice.”
“I try to get them outside.”
Phoebe comes back into the room and nods. Something about the angle of her head is softer, and I remember that she had a date with a hot guy last night. It gives me something else to fill the place where my worry wants to ramp itself up. “Want some tea?”