As she prattled on, a related drama was playing out in my mind. Here I’d been thinking that New York was the worst place to raise a child. But if my mother didn’t have much time left—good, lucid time, at least—didn’t I want to be here at the start of my child’s life so she could know them? And what about Piper and Hadley? It wasn’t like they’d be free childcare, but wouldn’t it be easier to have them around as I raised a baby?
I was still thinking about this when we arrived at Hadley’s. She and Topper lived on one of the top floors, and the elevator let out directly into her apartment. The doors had just opened when Josh galloped past, whinnying as Kaia, who was on his back, ordered him to giddyap.
I nearly stumbled backward. This was supposed to be my week to think about our divorce—without him. Why was he here?
“Josh?!” I said when I finally found my voice. “What are you doing?”
“Neighhhhh,” he whinnied from the other room. “I’m being a horse. And hi, Laine!”
“Josh!” said my mother, making a beeline for the family room, where he was prancing in circles.
I glanced at Hadley, who was jiggling Asher on her hip. “Did you know he was coming?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’m as surprised as you are. I almost called you when he got here, but I figured you’d find out soon enough.”
“Not so fast,” I said to Piper, who’d been standing beside Hadley but had started to slink in the other direction. “This was your doing, wasn’t it?”
She froze and opened her already enormous eyes even wider. “Well, yes. He’s always been a part of our family—”
“Twelve years,” I said.
“Fifteen, technically,” she said.
“Fourteen and a half,” I said evenly, when I actually wanted to throttle her. “Piper,” I said, “I’m here to have some time away from Josh. I’m trying to clear my head.”
Piper glanced toward the family room. “I get that, Laine. But we’re about to have a big talk about Mom, and the fact is, the two of you are still married. It’s not like you’re on bad terms or anything, and it didn’t seem right not to have him here. Like it or not, he’s a part of our family.”
Piper had crossed plenty of lines in her day, but I’d never known her to overstep like this. I didn’t feel angry anymore, though. No, now I could feel a sob gurgling up from deep within me. Leopards didn’t change their spots, but I guess I thought my sister would, because I felt devastated that she didn’t even think to ask me what I wanted and needed.
I didn’t say anything, which Piper immediately misread. “See!” she declared. “I knew you’d understand when you had a chance to think it through.”
Josh had unlatched Kaia from his back to hug my mother, but now he was walking over to where we were standing. He smiled shyly when he reached me. “Hey, Laine. I hope you don’t mind, but after your call yesterday, I didn’t want you to have to deal.”
It was a lovely overture—and one he normally wouldn’t have made, especially not in the middle of a launch. During the worst flu of my life two years earlier, I’d had to ask him to stay home in case I passed out on my way to the bathroom. He’d not taken Belle to the vet with me once over the past year—not even for that last terrible visit—because he’d been too busy working, though he claimed he wanted to give us time to be together. I had to admit, he really did seem to be trying to change.
But that didn’t mean he’d warmed to parenthood, I reminded myself.
“Then I talked to Piper and, well, I got in the car and took off,” he added.
The sobby sensation was gone, but I was still off-kilter. “You drove?” I managed. He hated driving, especially long distances, and never got behind the wheel in the city. I have to admit I was a little impressed.
“Yep. I’m parked in one of those hundred-dollar-a-day lots, but that’s still cheaper than a last-minute flight.”
My mother, hand in hand with Kaia, walked over and put her free arm around Josh. “Isn’t it wonderful? All of my family in one place,” she said, beaming up at him. “And not because of a birth or death, but just because! What an absolute treat!”
No, no one had died, but telling her that we thought something was wrong with her would be nearly as bad. When I looked over at Hadley, she appeared to be at a loss for words, and was stroking Asher’s head in a way that I recognized as anything but absentminded. After a moment, she said, “Hey, Laine? Can you help me in the kitchen?”
“Absolutely,” I said, eyeing Josh, who’d just started tossing a Nerf football back and forth with Jae.
Hadley had a long galley-style kitchen with a butler’s pantry off the side. She passed Asher to Topper, then dragged me into the pantry. I had to hand it to her—the tiny room was a work of art, with clear canisters lined up in rows on the shelves and baskets full of paper towels and cleaning supplies arranged neatly on the floor.
“We can’t possibly bring it up now,” I whispered.
“We have to,” she said. “That’s why Josh is here, after all.”
“You heard her! All of us together ‘just because,’” I said, making air quotes around the words. “This is going to crush her.”
“Laine,” said Hadley firmly, “the longer we wait, the worst this is going to get.”
“So you’re suggesting we go line up in the living room and deliver our verdict?”
“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head. “You and Josh should pull her aside and tell her. Then, when she’s ready to talk about it, we’ll all be right here.”
I pulled my head back in disbelief. “Me and Josh? Why?”
“You’re her favorite.”
I snorted. “Her favorite? Yeah, right.”
“It doesn’t matter if you think it’s true or not. Everyone else knows it,” she said. “She thinks I’m too bossy and still treats Piper like she’s a child. You’re the only one she listens to. And with Josh there, she won’t make a scene.”
I didn’t like this plan one bit, but I’d rather execute it than turn my conversation with Hadley into an argument. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll go get her and Josh, then drop the ax.”
“Thank you,” she said with such appreciation that I almost forgot that this was a terrible idea.
Josh and I asked my mother to speak with us privately in the living room. “Are you about to give me good news?” she said eagerly after I told her there was something we wanted to discuss, and my stomach immediately sank because she thought we were going to tell her we were expecting. Just as bad, Josh didn’t seem to pick up on what she was implying, and I had to work hard not to start down the rabbit hole of rumination about whether he’d ever even wanted kids, or if he’d just told me that because it was what I wanted to hear.
Instead, I explained that all of us had begun to notice she was slightly more forgetful than usual, and that we were worried about how she was leaving the house half-dressed. “I’m a grown woman, Laine,” she responded, but her voice lacked conviction. “I can wear whatever I want.”
Then she got angry when I mentioned seeing a neurologist. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she muttered, wringing her hands in her lap. “You think I’m turning into my mother, but I’m not.”
“I don’t think that at all, Mom. Nana Meyers had Parkinson’s, right? There’s no sign you have anything like that. But you’re seventy-two. It’s the right time to get a checkup.” I’d been attempting to reassure her, but every word only seemed to make her more upset.
Josh had been the one to soothe her. Irene saw a neurologist every year, he told her, just to make sure everything was working. It was a perfectly normal thing to do. “Think of it like data collection,” he said, putting his hand on her back. “Until we get some information, we really can’t make any decisions. We’re still in phase one, if you think about it.”
She was still twisting her hands, but she nodded in agreement, then thanked him.
And just like that, I saw that Piper had been right to invite him. He’d known just what to do; he’d made everything easier. Maybe it was time for me to rethink his offer to bring my mother to Ann Arbor.
Or for him to move here with us.