It was something like the growth chart so many parents etch into a doorway with pencil, mine included: Tess at two, Will at eight, Nell at thirteen. I even began to take the same pictures every year, on Thanksgiving and at the Memorial Day barbecue my parents always gave, a kind of living record, year by year, of a couple.
It wasn’t just them, though. I’d done the same thing with my sister and brothers, and used the self-timer to photograph all of us together. The photos changed as we married, had children, the definition of our family expanding, fluid.
Of course, even before Michael and I were married, I’d started what I only ever called my “Pictures of Us” file. Michael, me, Michael and me together, Emma, Emma and me—you get the idea. Emma’s birth had been an emergency caesarean, and although she had been born healthy and whole, I had ended up bleeding uncontrollably, so badly that the surgeon had decided on a partial hysterectomy to save my life. “Partial” meant removing my uterus, which also meant that Michael and I would never have more children, at least not naturally.
That blow had taken less time to recover from than I’d believed, and much of it was due to Emma. We were in love with our miraculous baby girl, and by the time she was three we were completely satisfied with our little family. So I had never expected that my definition of my new immediate family would need some revision.
And now Sophia Keating, the author of that revision—well, part of it, at least—was on the phone. Waiting for some response from me.
I wasn’t prepared for a conversation with Sophia. Not now, half-dressed and still damp, and maybe not ever. I was teetering between gratitude and vicious jealousy—I could thank her for raising her son alone all these years, leaving Michael out of it, but I was also tempted to scream, Why? Why did he sleep with you?
The first sentiment, of course, was petty and unfeeling. The second was about as mature as my fifteen-year-old daughter on a bad day.
So instead I said simply, “Hello.”
Her voice was low, a bit husky, and there was no way to guess if it was her usual timbre, or if she was as nervous as I was. “I know this is unexpected,” she said, and I dropped onto the bed behind me, nodding wordlessly. “All of it, including this…conversation.”
It wasn’t a conversation yet. I prayed the discussion would at least be a short one. My heart was banging clumsily as I said, “Unexpected is a good word for it.”
“I know.” She cleared her throat, and somewhere on the other end of the line I heard a siren wailing, distant and fleeting. “I just wanted to tell you that I don’t want anything from Michael. What I mean to say is, Drew would like his help, but it’s nothing financial, nothing…well, it’s for him to explain, really. Drew, I mean.”
I couldn’t help it—pity for her had already twisted into a painful knot in my throat. She was so completely ill at ease, so apologetic. Whatever had driven Drew to contact Michael was obviously not his mother’s idea.
“And you need to know that I didn’t tell Michael when I got pregnant because…well, when we broke off it was pretty clear he was going to make things work with you. And I cared about him—it wasn’t just some fling, you know? But I didn’t think…Well, I didn’t want to get in the way. And I don’t mean to sound like a martyr…” She trailed off, and I heard the brief note of panic in her tone. She was saying too much, getting in too deep.
Revealing things I was quite sure she hadn’t intended for me to know.
“Sophia…” I paused once her name was out. What was there to say? Thank you for raising my husband’s kid all by yourself? I couldn’t imagine what being a single parent would have meant, and when I thought about Emma’s babyhood, her full-speed-ahead toddler years, the idea of handling a child alone was enough to make my stomach lurch in despair even now.
I couldn’t very well blame Sophia for sleeping with Michael, much as I wanted to. That was my fault as much as his, and not hers at all, really. Michael had been free to see other people then. And so he had.
Twenty years, a marriage, a child and a mortgage later, the idea of him in another woman’s bed still made me ill. My man, I was tempted to screech. Mine.
The trouble was, all those years ago I had told “my man” I needed space. Now I couldn’t envision anything more absurd. Space for what? Where was this infamous space that everyone wanted? It loomed like a gaping black hole, ready to swallow me up, regrets and all.
“It’s okay,” I finally said, remembering the woman on the other end of the line, who was waiting for some response from me. What a pathetic word to offer, but it was all I had at the moment. “Drew has every right to speak to Michael, and Michael is…looking forward to meeting him.”
That was true, I realized. Michael was confused and upset, but there was no mistaking the flicker of curiosity in his eyes this morning, the way his gaze seemed focused somewhere distant. North, in fact, toward Boston.
“I just felt I needed to tell you that,” Sophia said. “I can’t really imagine what this is like for you. Not that a phone call from me necessarily makes it any easier.”
Her soft, husky laugh punctuated her words, and I found myself smiling. No matter what I would have liked to believe about Sophia Keating, she was turning out to be remarkably hard to dislike.
“It does help,” I offered, staring out the window, trying to picture her face, the room she was sitting in as she talked to me.
But when I hung up, I couldn’t avoid the knowledge that I’d lied. Talking to Sophia hadn’t helped at all. Liking her was going to make everything that much harder.
“IT’S BEAUTIFUL, isn’t it?”
Struggling to keep my coffee from spilling as my sister, Nell, jerked her well-worn little Civic to a stop an hour later, I glanced across a sprawling, shaggy yard at an enormous farmhouse. Its white paint was peeling, and one of the pale blue shutters on the second floor was askew, but the porch was trimmed in gingerbread, and two brave potted ferns flanked the front door. Beautiful was stretching it, but the place did have an air of old-world, dilapidated elegance. A shingle swinging in the breeze above the picket fence read Willowdale Farm.
“It’s…lovely,” I said cautiously, climbing out of the car after her. It certainly didn’t seem like the kind of place that catered weddings. Behind the house, a faded red barn leaned to one side beneath a pair of willow trees. Even on a bright spring morning, the farm seemed a bit sad, ashamed of its disuse and disrepair.
Nell had called before I’d left the house. Not that I’d had any idea where I was going aside from away—from the phone, from the bed Michael and I had shared for so long, from the unfinished work piled on my desk, which I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on. Taking a drive out Route 78 to see the place Nell swore was right for her wedding reception was the perfect distraction.
After one brief, failed engagement and countless boyfriends, Nell was getting married. She claimed that anyone under fifty was still eligible for a traditional white gown, and she had picked one out two months ago with my mother and me in tow. She wanted the whole deal—fancy reception, bridesmaids, throwing the bouquet, everything. Of course, I would be doing double duty as maid—I refused to call myself “matron”—of honor and photographer. The wedding album would be my gift to Nell and Jack, her fiancé.
“I know it’s not much now,” she was saying, sweeping one arm toward the grounds, her dark blond hair swinging. She’d inherited my mother’s thick sleek hair, while I’d gotten my father’s unruly curls. “But they’re turning it into a restaurant and catering facility, and they’re only asking peanuts for anything scheduled before the first of the year.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, struggling to visualize the grounds cleaned up and a fresh coat of paint on the aging shingles. “But will it be done by September?”
“Partly.”