“I’ll always want to leave,” Jimmy vowed.
“Why?”
“Because this place is stupid.”
Grace experienced an unusual twinge of protective loyalty toward her hometown. “No, it’s not, Jimmy. This is where your parents grew up. It should be interesting to you for that, if for no other reason.”
“Do people here hate Dad?”
The question was so unexpected that for a moment Grace couldn’t formulate a response. “Why on earth would you think that?” she asked at last.
He smushed the topsoil bag with his toe, staring intently as he did so. “You do.”
“I don’t,” she said, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t a lie. “Dad and I just can’t be married to each other anymore. There are lots of people I can’t be married to whom I don’t hate.” Luke Stewart came to mind, a little joke from her subconscious.
“Does everyone know he left us?”
It broke her heart that Jimmy felt the abandonment so keenly. If Michael had a bit of heart to go with his good looks, he would have made more of an effort to maintain contact with his son. Since the divorce, though, he’d been in California seven months out of twelve and had only seen Jimmy about once a month when he was around.
“No one knows the details of what happened with Dad.” Of course, everyone knew at least some version of it. She’d heard several variations on the story herself. “You know what? Most people I’ve seen are just so glad we’re here. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said what a fine young man you are.”
Jimmy’s face reddened. “They don’t know me.”
“But they want to. Give them a chance, Jimmy. You might really like them.”
He shrugged.
“And look at all this room you have.” She gestured at the backyard with the trowel she had picked up again. “We didn’t have a tenth of this in New Jersey. I think you’re going to have a lot of fun out here this summer.” She got up and went to him, pulling him into her arms. “I know it’s hard, buddy. It’s kind of hard for me too. But if we stick together and make the best of things, I think we might end up even happier than we were before.”
That much, at least, she believed. It was certainly possible for her to be happier divorced than she’d been with Michael. From the day they’d married, she’d felt a certain sense of this is it? They’d dated in high school and college and everyone had expected them to get married, so they had. They’d moved to the suburbs, bought two cars, had a child, done all the things that were expected.
If she was honest, Grace had to admit that it wasn’t the stuff that fairy tales were made of. In a way, she couldn’t really blame Michael for wanting something new. What she blamed him for was the way he set about getting it, and the way he’d treated his family—his son—in the process.
“There is one thing that might make me happy,” Jimmy said slowly.
Grace frowned. “What’s that?”
“A dog.”
“A dog.” Just as her mother had suggested.
She liked dogs. She’d had one herself, growing up. So why was she so resistant to the idea?
She knew why; it was because Michael was allergic, or at least he’d claimed to be, though she’d never seen him so much as sniffle. She remembered, with some irritation, how, during her teenage years, they always had to put Buff, her golden retriever, in the laundry room when Michael was coming to the house. Before now, a dog for Jimmy hadn’t even been a possibility.
Now it felt as if getting a dog would be the final nail in the coffin of her marriage to Michael.
“I think it’s a great idea,” she said.
He brightened. “Really? I can get one?”
“Are you going to take care of it? Feed it, walk it, brush it?”
“Yes!”
“Then I don’t see why not.” It was so good to see that hope in his eyes again. She smiled and pulled him into a hug again. “Why don’t you think about what kind of dog you want, big or small, and we’ll go to the humane society tomorrow and look.”
“Yes!” He pumped his fist in the air. “I’m gonna have a dog!”
And we’re really building a home without Michael now, Grace thought, without regret.
“Go on in and get ready to go to Jenna’s now,” she said to her excited son. “I’ve got to go back to the school for a couple of hours.”
For once, he didn’t argue. He skipped into the house so lightly she wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to see him click his heels together. She would bet he’d clean his face and hands without being told.
She picked up her gardening tools and dropped them into a bucket by the door before stepping into the cool, air-conditioned house.
“Will you be going out tonight?” her mother asked when she walked into the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea.
“I don’t think so, why?”
Was it her imagination, or did her mother blush? “I might have some company, and I wondered if you would be around.”
“Company? Who?”
Her mother took a cloth and busied herself drying dishes that were already sitting, dry, in the rack by the sink. “Oh, it’s not important. Just a member of my bridge club.”
Grace was interested. “A male member of the bridge club, by any chance?”
Dot set the cloth down and looked at her daughter. “Now why on earth would you ask that?”
Grace laughed. “Because, Mom, you’re acting very cryptic about this whole thing.”
“I certainly am not!”
“Okay, okay. Look, do you want Jimmy and me to get out of here tonight so you can have your friend over? We could go to a movie or something.”
“Grace Ann Perigon, you do not need to leave the house so I can have a friend over! I merely asked because I wanted to plan on how many pretzels to buy if I had company. But, now that I think of it, I’ll probably go out to the movies myself.”
Her mother was definitely hiding something, Grace thought. It was either a boyfriend, plans for a surprise party, or she had joined a cult and it was her turn to host the meeting. Assuming it wasn’t the latter, Grace’s birthday wasn’t for two months, so it had to be a boyfriend. But why hide that?
Grace suspected she knew why. “You know, Mom, if you ever did want to date someone…” What could she say without sounding condescending? It wasn’t her place to approve or disapprove, but she had a feeling her mother might worry that she would feel weird about it. “Well, I just think it would be a good idea.”
“What would be a good idea?”
“You dating. If you met someone. Although,” she added cynically, “who you could meet around this place, I don’t know.”
“There are lots of nice men around here, honey. You’ll meet someone.”
“Who said anything about me?” Three days earlier Roger Logan, who had a wife and four kids, had approached her in the produce section at the supermarket and asked if she wanted to meet him for a drink later. That about summed up the options for Grace here. She wasn’t even thinking about dating for herself.
Her