For the next thirty minutes, they continue like this, concentrating, spelling, discussing, until they’ve each come up with five resolutions—all practical and predictable and utterly doable. Yet as she tapes their lists to the refrigerator, she knows that the exercise, while productive, was something of a sham—that there is only one resolution that matters to both of them right now: get over Nick.
To that end, she makes the night as fun and festive as possible, playing endless rounds of go fish, watching Star Wars, and letting Charlie stay up until midnight for the first time ever. As the ball drops in Times Square, they drink sparkling cider out of crystal flutes and toss handfuls of confetti that they made with a hole punch and construction paper. Yet all the while, she can feel the hollow, forced joy in her efforts, and worse, she senses it in Charlie, too, especially as she tucks him into bed that night. His expression is too earnest, his hug around her neck too tight, his words too formal as he tells her how much fun he had, actually thanking her.
“Oh, sweetie,” she says, thinking that she must be the only mother in the world who wishes her son would forget to say thank you. “I love spending time with you. More than anything.”
“Me too,” he says.
She pulls the covers up to his chin and kisses both of his cheeks and his forehead. Then she says good night and goes to her own bed, checking her phone one last time before she falls asleep and wakes up to the new year.
***
She has always hated January for all the usual reasons—the postholiday letdown, the short, dark days, and the miserable Boston weather that, despite having never lived elsewhere, she knows she will never get used to. She hates the nor’easter gales, the ankle-deep gray slush, the endless stretches of painful, single-digit cold—so bitter and biting that thirty-degree days actually feel like a reprieve, a tease for spring, until the rain comes and the temperature drops like a stone, freezing everything solid once again.
But this year, this January, is especially unbearable. And as the days pass, she starts to worry that she will never emerge from her funk. She feels profound disappointment over Nick, along with near-constant worry for Charlie, both coagulating in her heart, fading into plain old bitterness, a state of being she has always guarded against, even at her lowest.
One afternoon toward the end of the month, Summer’s mother calls her while she is at work. She feels a spike of negativity, remembering her daughter’s words on the playground, bracing herself to hear about another incident.
But Beverly’s voice is warm and breezy, no hint of trouble anywhere. “Hi, Valerie! Did I catch you at a bad time?” she asks.
Valerie glances at the pile of documents on her desk, her stomach in knots as she replies, “No. Not at all . . . It’s nice to have a break from the fascinating world of insurance recovery.”
“Sounds only slightly better than the fascinating world of accounting,” Beverly says, laughing robustly, reminding Valerie that, against all odds, she actually likes this woman. “So how’ve you been? Did you have a good holiday?” she continues.
“Yeah,” Valerie lies. “It was good. How was yours?”
“Oh—it was okay, but absolute chaos. We had my husband’s kids this year—all four of them—and his former in-laws . . . which is a long, totally bizarre story I won’t bore you with . . . So to tell you the truth, I was really ready to go back to work. And I don’t even like my job.” She laughs again as Valerie decides, with relief, that if something went wrong at school today, it can’t be all that dire.
“So did you hear the news?” Beverly asks, amusement in her voice.
“The news?” Valerie says, refraining from telling Beverly that she is not in the social loop at school—or anywhere, for that matter.
“About the latest love connection?”
“No,” Valerie says, unwittingly picturing Nick, always picturing Nick.
“Summer and Charlie,” Beverly says, “are an item.”
“Summer and Charlie?” Valerie echoes, sure that Beverly has her facts wrong—or perhaps is making some sort of bad joke.
“Yeah. Apparently it’s pretty serious . . . In fact, we should probably sit down and start hammering out the details for the wedding and rehearsal dinner. I think we should keep it low-key. . . don’t you?”
Valerie smiles, slightly disarmed, as she says, “Low-key is always good with me . . . Although, I must confess, I don’t have a lot of experience with wedding plans.”
It is something she wouldn’t ordinarily say, the sort of personal information she always keeps close to the vest, and feels uneasy until Beverly laughs and chimes in with, “No worries. I’ve done it three times. So together we’re just about normal.”
Valerie laughs a real laugh, her first of the year, and says, “Normal would be nice.”