I couldn’t be more glad for you—and not just because your happy ending gives me hope that I’ll find mine too.
—Liv’s handwritten note in the engagement card discovered in Clara’s in-box the Monday after the Christmas party
Ohio’s November skies usually struck Clara as unforgiving, but as she turned her eyes upward on her way to the mailbox, this evening’s offering seemed more sympathetic. A full spectrum of blues blended itself into the darkening gray as if to say, I’m sorry this is the best you’re going to get until spring, but I’m trying.
Soon Thanksgiving would come and go, and Christmas would bring enough cheer to distract from the slog of winter ahead. Then they’d all resign themselves to it for the dreary months to follow. She’d adopt a shameless wardrobe of fleece pants and thermal shirts, and hunker down. It wouldn’t be the same without Kristin and her brood crunching across the snowy yard to share hot chocolate after school, but maybe there’d be new friends for her and the kids next door. The pretty Victorian remained the perfect picture of a place to raise a family.
The FOR SALE sign in its front yard was swinging almost imperceptibly in the breeze as a shiny red car slowed to a stop in front of Izzy’s house. Penny’s coat fell open as she stepped out of the driver’s side, revealing the baby bump that was just starting to show, and waved a silent greeting to Clara. Penny had become a fast regular on the street these past weeks, but for the first time she wasn’t arriving alone. The messy-haired, fresh-faced man who offered his hand as she stepped over the curb was smiling at her with such adoration that Clara had to look away at the pang she felt for her friend awaiting their arrival inside. It was almost a shame Penny didn’t know what Izzy had sacrificed for sisterly love, though clearly it was better this way.
Sometimes keeping something from someone you loved really was the best thing—the bravest thing—uncomfortable though it may be.
At the mailbox, Clara peeked at the only real letter in the thick stack of mail, slid it into her pocket, and gathered up the bills and Black Friday circulars, so many that she hugged them to herself as she went back inside, suddenly feeling abuzz with possibility. Benny was in the kitchen, Thomas hanging on one of his legs—“Daddy, want to see what I can do? Want to see what I can do?”—and Maddie on the other—“Daddy do! Daddy do!”—as he attempted to open the fridge with a look hovering between amusement and annoyance. Clara knew that amusement would win out, but also that not all wives and children were so lucky.
And before she could lose her nerve—the images of Penny and Josh and the FOR SALE sign next door intermingling with the one in front of her—an idea that had existed only in her brain was bubbling over.
“All this stuff with Kristin and her sister, then Izzy and her sister, has me thinking about my own family,” she blurted out. Benny looked up at her in surprise. “I know my mom drives me insane, but for my part, I could do better.” She expertly relocated Maddie 180 degrees around Benny’s leg, opened the door, and handed him the five o’clock Friday beer she knew he was after.
“You’re getting good at this June Cleaver thing,” he said, taking it gratefully, and she shot him a look. He’d been apologetic in his shock after the incident with Paul and Izzy, and she’d told him the only apology she was after was one for having questioned how she should be spending her days. He’d backpedaled fiercely.
“What does insane mean, Mommy? Your mom is Grandma, right? Grandma drives you insane?”
She really had to start watching what she said around Thomas. She hugged him to her, hoping futilely that he might forget the question. “June Cleaver, at your service,” she told Benny over his head, rolling her eyes.
“Maybe I was just thinking of cleavers in general,” he said wryly.
“Funny. But really. I could get a cheap midweek flight after Thanksgiving, maybe? The kids will have cabin fever before long—Florida sunshine will do them good.” Thomas had turned his attention back to his relentless pursuit of interesting Benny in watching the same Hot Wheels trick for the tenth time, and Clara was practically shouting over him to be heard. “Maybe you’d like a few quiet evenings too,” she added with a smile.
“If that’s what I have to sacrifice for you to reconnect with your mom, so be it.”
She helped herself to a beer too, overcome by one of her increasingly frequent urges to wrap herself in the cozy ordinariness of it all: the banter at the end of a long week, the grilled cheese on sourdough she’d throw together with soup, the movie she’d picked up for after the kids were in bed. “I’ll be the one sacrificing my sanity after one night with my mother. Prepare to defend your actions when I ask why you ever let me think it was a good idea to go.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “Has anyone ever told you you’re really good at doing the right thing?”
She shook her head, pretending she wasn’t still hoping that someone would.
*
Christmas lights wound around palm trunks in their best impression of a holiday Corona commercial. Glittery oversized snowflakes hung in windows and storefronts, which puzzled her. Santas and reindeer she’d expected, but why evoke snow? Part of the charm of Christmas this far south was that it didn’t have a thing to do with being cold but was festive anyway.
Clara found she liked it here this time of year. The joy had drained out of the holiday when they’d lost Liv, and she’d been trying to redeem it ever since. Having Thomas and Maddie had poured the magic back in, but seeing Christmas come to life so far from home was like an accidental healing salve to a wound she hadn’t realized was still open.
But maybe it wasn’t accidental. She was here seeking a kind of peace, after all.
“Mom?” Clara stepped into the tiny living room of her parents’ condo and found her mother clad in a hot pink jogging suit that made swooshing noises when she moved, demonstrating for Thomas and Maddie how to use her water aerobics equipment.
No wonder Dad spends every waking minute golfing, she thought, then chastised herself for the cruelty. Her parents had spent so much of their marriage apart that it seemed they’d forgotten how to spend time together, even though now they had nothing but.
“I know this weight is just foam, but you’d be surprised how much water resistance it gives you in toning your core,” her mother was telling Thomas, who nodded solemnly, touching it with his index finger as if it were a curious alien object fallen to earth. Maddie was busy trying to balance what looked like some sort of armband on her head, giggling each time it slid to the ground.
Her mother hadn’t exactly figured out how to employ a more grandmotherly version of her uninspired mothering strategies, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. Everything about this trip was novel to them—the plane, the rental car, the condo complex arranged as a maze of balconies and shuffleboard courts and, at the center, a pool so heated it was like bathwater. Clara was enjoying the change of scene, too, so much that she almost felt guilty for leaving Benny at home, where winter was blowing in no less bleak than the tension on their street that had not quite subsided. He was hopeful, though, that the extra hours he was squeezing in this week would afford him more family time during the holiday, and for Clara, getting the better end of both deals, that was a pretty good tradeoff.
“Would you mind watching the kids for a bit?” Clara asked “There’s something I was hoping to run out and do.”
She fixed her face in a look meant to imply that Santa had a mission afoot—as so many looks did this time of year—and fortunately her mother wasn’t so far removed from parenting that she missed the reference. Tucking her cropped silver hair behind her ear, for a second she almost looked like an elf.