It was obvious that he couldn’t wait to get back to his room, where he spent most of his time composing music for his “band.” Even as a baby, music had soothed him and now it was his passion. Anna had listened to Mozart when she was pregnant, so she felt at least partly responsible for his musical talents. He wanted to be a songwriter, as well as a performer, and she had to squash the urge to nudge him hard toward a more secure career. Perhaps if she’d spent her time watching medical dramas on the TV when she was pregnant, he might have chosen to be a doctor.
“Maybe you can write me a Christmas song.” Although no doubt the idea of writing a song for his mother would be as embarrassing as her hugging him goodbye when she dropped him at school.
He didn’t respond, and she realized that he was wearing the tiny wireless earphones they’d given him for his birthday and he couldn’t hear her.
“Daniel!”
He jumped and looked up. “What?” Looking guilty, he pulled out his earphones. “Sorry. I’m rehearsing with Ted and Alex later, so I wanted to get this right. We’re playing at the school concert on Thursday.”
“I know.” It never ceased to amaze her that the tiny babies she and Pete had brought home from the hospital had turned into fully functioning human beings. She wasn’t quite ready to think of them as adults. Adults picked their laundry up off the floor and generally left the bed before midday. “I have tickets. I’m looking forward to it.”
Daniel looked panicked. “You’re coming?”
“Of course. So is Dad. We’re your parents. We always come to your concerts, plays, ball games—whatever.” That was her role, wasn’t it? To be there on the sidelines cheering her children on. Her parents had done that and she’d done her best to reproduce that same happy family atmosphere. When she’d had her own children she’d imported some of her favorite traditions into her new family.
“I know, and I appreciate it, but—” Daniel’s smile was a little panicked. “It’s great. No worries.”
What was she missing? She’d learned that with teenagers what they didn’t say was often as important as what they did say.
“I thought we could all go out for pizza afterward.”
If there was one thing guaranteed to make her son’s face brighten it was mention of pizza, but not today, apparently.
“Speak the truth, brother.” Meg slid her phone away, sensing conflict the way a shark sensed a drop of blood in the water.
“Shut up.” Two livid streaks of color appeared on Daniel’s cheeks as he glared at his twin sister.
“Daniel the spaniel.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Why not? That’s what you are. You wag your tail and please people, just like Lola does. If you don’t speak up, people are going to walk right over you.”
Lola, their eight-year-old springer spaniel, heard her name and shot round the table to Meg, hopeful of attention.
Meg stroked her soft ears. “He should tell Mom the truth, shouldn’t he?” she crooned. “He has a girl, but don’t worry—he’s still going to love you.”
The red bloom had spread across Daniel’s face. “Sometimes I hate you.”
Anna sighed. On reflection, maybe her life wasn’t totally perfect. Sibling spats were normal, she knew that, but that didn’t mean they didn’t sometimes drain her.
As a parent you were required to be everything from a cab driver to a negotiator.
“Daniel doesn’t have to tell me anything he doesn’t want to.” She intervened gently, trying to remain neutral. “It’s important to respect people’s privacy, Meg.”
Meg’s eyes narrowed. “I’m speaking up for the greater good. Daniel would rather you weren’t there, but he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. If you’re trying to impress someone, you don’t want your parents in the front row. Just saying.”
Sometimes Anna wished her smart, spiky daughter would stop just saying. But she also wondered what was going on with Daniel, who, unlike his sister, had never given her a moment’s trouble. She worried far more about him than Meg, who was a born survivor. Whoever this girl was, Anna hoped she was kind.
She paused for a moment, searching for the right thing to say. “We’d like to be there to support you, but of course if you’d rather we weren’t there then that’s fine.”
Relief spread across Daniel’s face. “Really? You wouldn’t mind, Mom?”
Anna felt a jolt of shock. That wasn’t the response she’d expected. “Of course I wouldn’t mind,” she lied. The frequency with which she found herself lying to her own children in the name of good parenting had come as a shock to her. “We love hearing you play, but if you’d rather we weren’t there then we totally understand.” Another lie. She didn’t understand at all. “There will be plenty of other opportunities.”
But would there? The twins would be off to college the following year. Flying the nest.
It was something she tried not to think about. “I hope it goes well for you, honey.” She hoped that the girl he was trying to impress wasn’t about to break his heart.
When you had a child, everyone warned you about the lack of sleep and physical tiredness that came with parenting. No one talked about the emotional exhaustion. It had been a shock to her to discover that whatever her children felt, she felt. That their pain was her pain. Their struggles, her struggles. That long after you’d stopped being woken for night feeds, you’d be woken by anxiety for their future. Unlike Meg, who had been buffeted by the storms of complicated female friendship, Daniel had kept the same small loyal group of friends since preschool and up until recently he’d been too focused on music to think about girls, but that appeared to be changing.
Pete leaned forward to grab the salt. “Your mother and I will go out for dinner,” he said. “Date night. It will make a nice change. You can tell us about it after. Call if you need a ride home.”
Daniel shot him a grateful smile; Meg went back to her phone. Anna felt as if something important was slipping away.
She didn’t want to go out for dinner. She didn’t want date night. She wanted to go and listen to Daniel perform in the concert.
Wasn’t Pete at all bothered? Probably not. He didn’t seem to feel the passage of time the way she did, and maybe that was because his life wasn’t about to change as dramatically as hers. Their family and their children were her whole world, whereas they were one part of his world. He still commuted into his office in Manhattan three days a week, and on the other two days he worked from home, closeted away in his office.
She poked at the food on her plate.
She was being ridiculous, she knew that. At some point her children were going to leave home. That was the way of things. She’d always known the day would come, but it had been a distant worry. Now that day was fast approaching. She almost wished she hadn’t had twins. If there had been a gap between her children at least then she could have let go of them one at a time and gradually eased herself into a child-free life, instead of losing both at the same time.
She was dreading the moment she dropped them at college, no matter where that turned out to be. She’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to cry, but it was going to be hard. And harder still would be arriving home after.